Topical Blog Week #2 (Due Wednesday)

Blake Wedeking

For this week’s blog, I found the topic of nature versus nurture in my reading of Chapter 1 in the why study psychology section of the book. Researchers are trying to figure out why people are interested in psychology and for me one of the topics is nature versus nurture. I have always been interested in which plays a greater role in the development of an individual. Do we influence our environment? Does our environment influence us? Are we genetically programmed for success? These questions have always been of particular interest to me so I decided to look more into the topic and pin point how our genetics and environment make up the person who we are today. Although this topic is mentioned in brief in chapter 1 to strike attention to the reader, it brings the most curiosity to my mind. This issue has been popularized and pondered for over 140 years and still psychologists are researching the effects of environment and genetics.

Just knowing a little bit about nature versus nurture got me researching about its history and the people that coined the term. I was surprised to find that Sir Francis Galton coined the term over 140 years ago and that he was in fact a cousin of Charles Darwin who wrote the book The Origin of Species. Some psychologists consider this debate to be a matter of already known knowledge but it is interesting to me that some psychologists at periods in times believed either nature over nurture or nurture over nature. Although this debate may be seen as naive and an outdated form of knowledge it is still a very interesting subject in regards to development. John Locke actually believed that only environmental influences made the person who they are. Later studies with twins and adopted twins show that this may not in fact be the case. Although "nurture" has historically been referred to as the care given to children by the parents, with the mother playing a role of particular importance, this term is now regarded by some as any environmental factor that may play a role in the development process. Our book mentions that both play an important factor in our development but it is interesting to me how many people had argued against this criticism.

While doing research on the topic of nature versus nurture I was interested in finding out how different parent styles and social influences could affect how an individual acted in a certain environment. Environment is obviously a key factor but what else I pondered could our environment affect our behavior and how we react to certain stimuli. I found out about Bandura’s experiment with the bobo doll and got curious about how much of an impact it played a role on the lives of children. This experiment actually showed adults hitting dolls so when a child was placed in the room with dolls, the child then acted the same as the adult. I was surprised because I thought that the child may or may not do this but every time the incident occurred. Are we really that prone to hurt someone just because someone else has? Who knew our environment would make others follow one another’s actions? We now have a more informed understanding from others that have partaken in experiments like these.

How is nature versus nurture viewed today I wondered while researching? What can we learn from present research rather than past research on the subject? I was intrigued to find through much research that nature versus nurture can also vary throughout which part of the country you live in. For example people across the UK were studied and scientists concluded that children’s behavior in school were due in part from their genes by more than 60 percent. In contrast, environment played a greater deal in London as there are wealthier neighborhoods and kids could be subject to different environmental influences within their community. Why do these differences exist I wondered? How does Banduras experiment and our common knowledge play into these statistics? The key answer here is that both nature and nurture play a key factor in the development of an individual and we must take both into account as they are both of vital importance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture
I chose this website because it gave me a definition of the nature versus nurture principle but also the history of the term and why it was debated in the past.
http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/a/sociallearning.htm
I decided to research this website as it had a lot of interesting points about human nature and how we are influenced by others in our environment. Also, I believe the information in this link was vital to the understanding of human reactions.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9326819/Nature-vs-nurture-outcome-depends-on-where-you-live.html
I chose to examine this website because it showed variations of nature versus nurture across the globe in different studies. I found it interesting that both factors play a role in our development but maybe one may weigh more in certain scenarios.

1a) State what your topic is: Edwin G. Boring
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter: Edwin G. Boring was quoted at the beginning of the chapter. Boring was also brought up throughout the chapter and a section was also dedicated to him specifically. Boring was well known for his writings and for his intelligence.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it: I am interested in Edwin G. Boring because although his name deceives him, he is a very interesting man. He started out as an engineer and as a teacher, but later went on to further his education. I find his dedication to psychology intriguing because he wanted other people to learn from him and have a better understanding of psychology. In doing so, he had his own television program and continued to teach psychology.
2) Born in Philadelphia, Edwin G. Boring was raised as a Quaker in a family using plain language. Plain language simply means using words such as “thy” and “thee.” He was part of an avid churchgoing family. As a child, he was considered to be too hyper because of his hyperactivity, he did not attend school until he was nine years old. He was eager to make friends and to play. Although he missed quite a few years of school, he was a very bright kid and was able to channel his excitement into his school work. He excelled through school, and while in a Quaker high school he portrayed his writing skills in the school newspaper and showing his intellectual abilities on the debate team. He later went on to attend Cornell University to study engineering. Soon after completing a degree in engineering, Boring went on to work for Bethlehem Steel Company. He eventually quit the steel company, and started teaching for a while. After teaching, he went on to get his Ph. D. in psychology, and then taught for only four years before deciding teaching at Cornell was not what he wanted to do.
During World War I, Boring’s son was born, so he was not drafted. Disappointment set in because he was looking forward to serving, but he was given an opportunity by a man named Robert M. Yerkes. Boring was asked to join in the intelligence testing program. He was given the title “chief psychological examiner at Camp Upton in Long Island.” Boring became known for his intelligence tests that he conducted for the army.
Boring was also known for his study on the “moon illusion.” He had a theory about the moon appearing larger when seen on the horizon than on its zenith. He was considered to be an experimental psychologist and did a lot of work with visual perception. His findings about the moon appearing larger on the horizon were that by looking straight on at an object our visual perception makes the object appear larger, but if we were to look up into the sky at the moon our perception makes the moon appear smaller. It is all in how we look at things, and he continued to study this topic with a fellow researcher by the name of A. H. Holway.
http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/boring-edwin-g.pdf
I chose this website because it had relevant information to the topic. It also gave correct facts and more detailed background information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Boring
I chose this source because it gave more information on the different studies that Edwin G. Boring conducted. I found these studies to be interesting, especially the study on the “moon illusion.”
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k3007&panel=icb.pagecontent44003%3Ar%241%3Fname%3Dboring.html&pageid=icb.page19708&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent44003
This source was chosen because it gave information on his education. And some of the studies he was involved in.
I found Edwin G. Boring to be a very interesting and busy man. He was full of intelligence, but I feel as though he did not know how to express it. His studies were very interesting and made me think. The most interesting was visual perception because it is something we deal with daily, but it isn't something we take time to think about. I think it would be neat to learn more about perceptions because it is a vast topic that I feel could be studied in many different ways.

J.P

James Alger
1. The topic that I chose was naturalistic history. It relates to chapter one because it states that no matter what happens history is going to be made, no one person can change all of history. I am interested in it because I want to become a history teacher, when I read about this topic in the reading I was interested because I agreed with it. One person cannot change events that are supposed to happen, all anyone can do is go with it because history will be made no matter what.
2. A.) The first article that I read had to do with naturalism which is related to naturalistic history. The world is based off of natural sciences, we do not rely on phenomenon to make things work the way they do. In a sense we rely on natural science because we find what works and then we stick with it. Things are meant to work the way they were made, we cannot change the way we do certain things and expect for the results to be the same as the time where the results were desirable. Overall we do not rely on one thing or a hero to make sure we win wars or do something as simple as driving to work, we rely on the natural science and do things the way that they have worked before.
B.) The second article that I found to be interesting also had to do with naturalism. It said many things to do with both science and history has to do with naturalistic approaches. This is because without something being natural there would be no way possible to explain how or even why something happens the way it does. Take for instance gravity, there is an explanation for why gravity happens the way it does and is done through the scientific method. If scientists were to believe that we stay on the ground just because it is some supernatural event and it just happens, then there would be no talk about gravitational pulls and really no explanation of why it happens. This also ties into history, wars are not just won because of a supernatural force, there are events that lead up to a win and all events can be explained which all have natural actions. Any psychologist having a theory does not come to a conclusion that whatever they are testing is a supernatural object, there are natural causes that happens to objects which is what the experimenting is trying to figure out, the natural causes.
C.) The third article that I read had to do with naturalism and the pagan ancient history. This tied into the topic of naturalistic history due to explaining more of how history being a natural event can tie into us knowing more of ourselves. If history is naturalistic it is easier to know your ancestors due to knowing of the stories of where they were from, also it would tie into knowing more of the future and the present. A lot of historians claim that history repeats itself, this may or may not be true, but knowing history and why things happened the way that that they happened can give anyone a better understanding of why they are in the position of life as they are. America was not made through supernatural causes, history has events that built up from the Spanish searching for gold to the exploring of America, this is then how we all came to live in America today. Understand your ancestors, like the article stated, you will have a deeper understanding of who you are and why you are here, also why they decided to immigrate to America. We were not just born and happen to live in a place that a supernatural cause chose us to, but naturalistic events all lead up to where we are today which explains who we are.
3. http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/descriptions.htm I chose this article because when it brought up the parts of how the world is a natural science it sparked a connection to how things are natural and not one thing or person can change that.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/ I chose this article because it went into more information about natural science and brought up more thought of what naturalistic history can relate to, it also talked about naturalistic history.
http://humanisticpaganism.com/2013/07/28/why-is-the-ancient-history-of-naturalism-important-to-our-future/ I chose this article because the main part had to do with how one person can use information of history being natural and this can lead up to them knowing more about themselves because we come to learn more about ourselves through history

1a) State what your topic is: Edwin G. Boring

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter: Edwin G. Boring is known as the most famous historian and is quoted at the beginning of the chapter. Boring’s quote states history adds meaning and understanding to the present, but cannot predict the future.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it: After reading the close-up about Boring I was interested in learning more about him. I find it fascinating that Boring was first an engineering student who later becomes interested in psychology by taking an elective class.

Edwin G Boring was known as an American experimental psychologist and was concerned “Mr. Psychology” from the 1920s to the 1960s. Boring had a significant almost of writes and work to help him separate psychology from philosophy.

Boring was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 23, 1896. He was raised in a matriarchal Quaker household. This indicates that he grew up in a very religious setting. At the age of nine, Boring went to Orthodox Quaker School. Through-out his children he was fascinated in electricity. Boring decided to go to Cornell University to student electrical engineering. While attending Cornell, Boring took an intro to psychology class as an elective with professor Titchener. He found every lecture as “magic” and was motivated on the praise he received from his paperwork. Boring kept with engineering and graduated with his master’s in 1908.
After graduating Cornell University, Boring worked as an electrician and taught science. He ended up quitting his job as an electrician a year later and focused on teaching science. Boring went back to Cornell University after a rough year teaching science but still planned on teaching. After taking a laboratory course in psychology with Professor Bentley he switched over to psychology.
Boring was now a devoted student at Cornell University and joined Titchener's laboratory group. While at Cornell, Boring had a lot of research interests. He did work on schizophrenia and other psychological problems. In 1914 Boring graduated Cornell with his doctorate. He stayed at Cornell for the next four years and taught.
In 1918 Robert Yerkes asked Boring to help assist with the US Army’s testing work. Boring accepted and soon became chief psychological. He played a huge role in organizing the massive Army Reports.
Later in 1922 Boring taught at Harvard until his retirement in 1957. During this time Boring worked on separating psychology and philosophy. This was one of his main goals while at Harvard. In 1934 Boring reached his goal became the chair of psychology department.

Edwin G. Boring is known as the most famous historians and was able to separate psychology from philosophy.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring
I choose this website because it gave information on his childhood

http://river.clarion.edu/trvilberg/ImpPerPapers/Donmoyer%26Semovoski.html
I choose this website because another student posted this as a project. It was interesting to read what information she had collected about Boring.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Edwin_Garrigues_Boring.aspx
I choose this website because it had great information on Boring’s education and careers.

While reading this chapter, I found the different issue’s in Psychology’s history to be pretty interesting. One issue that I believe is very important to understand is presentism. The textbook discusses how we need to be careful when learning about history, because we can get a skewed idea of the past if we have presentist ideas. I wanted to know why presentism is so dangerous.

When learning, talking, or writing about history, it can be dangerous to have a presentist mindset. Presentism is to interpret the events in the past in terms of present understanding. This is dangerous because we use our knowledge to judge the actions of others in the past, who did not have the same knowledge. “What were they thinking?” we may say to ourselves. Clearly what those psychologists were doing did not make sense, and we knew it would have a less-than-appealing outcome. However, we need to remember that those psychologists did not have as much information about the experiments they were conducting as we do now, however many years later. Maybe their failed research is what lead to our greater understanding.

As a society, we have come to love the term “modern”. It can be heard in almost any setting. There have been great advances in technology to make it “modern technology”; someone just refurbished their living room to make it look more “modern”; there is even a modern style of clothing. Why do we love modern so much? I think it is because we are a society that loves instant gratification, and we love being able to go out and buy the newest, top-of-the-line, “modern” item. This obsession with modern, however, is beginning to make history obsolete. As Lynn Hunt puts it in her article Against Presentism, “it threatens to put us out of business as historians.” People very seldom want to hear about the past, or what their “modern” items originated as; no one cares about the iPhone 1 anymore, now that we have the iPhone 5. The first model is almost completely forgotten. Sitting in class today, one of my professors talked about how we are modernizing the way we approach sustainability. We love modern.

So what is the problem here? Modern is great. That is how we advance our knowledge about the world around us. However, it is a problem when we apply our modern ideas to understand the past. Steven Francis Murphy talks about this fallacy in one of his blogs entitled, “Pondering the Fallacy of Presentism in History Classes and in American Science Fiction.” Murphy teaches classes about World War II, and a frequently used essay question is about the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. Over the years of reading countless essays, Murphy has found that one answer creeps into the mix a lot. Students will say that the U.S. did not respect Japan. However, the generals at the time did respect the general of the Japanese. What they mean is the generals did not respect the Japanese according to today’s definition of respect. John Mahaffie, a futurist, expresses an opposite problem than Murphy and discusses the dangers of looking toward the future with a presentist mentality. He states that, “One tendency is to look at a single dimension of change, for example, the commercialization and proliferation of a new technology, holding the rest of the world constant.” By this, he is saying that we will take one idea or thing that has potential for advancement, and we take that thing out of context and view it “modernized” down the road without our thoughts and opinions also modernizing. It’s the opposite problem that Murphy and the textbook discuss; on the one hand, we can look into the past with our current knowledge and current cultural ideas and get a skewed image of what things were like back then; on the other hand, if we look to the future and imagine technology modernizing around us, we forget that with that our understanding will also change.

Our knowledge about the world around us is always changing, but when speaking in a historical context, we tend to forget that. We did not always know as much as we do about the brain. And, to this day, we still do not know everything. I can just imagine people of the future looking back to where we are now and saying to themselves, “What were they thinking?”

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2002/0205/0205pre1.cfm

http://sfmurphy1971.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/pondering-the-fallacy-of-presentism-in-history-classes-and-in-american-science-fiction/

Both of these sources were professors that were making points about the problems their students have encountered with presentism. These were great resources for understanding how crucial it is to change the lens with which we look into the past. We cannot look back and keep our current knowledge and culture; we have to adapt to the time to really understand the history and how monumental what was taking place really was.

http://foresightculture.com/2009/01/23/presentism
This blog took a different approach, which I found very interesting. The author talked about presentism in the context of looking toward the future. If we imagine the advancement of technology 50 years into the future, we also have to assume that our knowledge will change and our culture will change with it. We can’t assume the world will be otherwise unchanged besides the one advancement.

NRS
1a) My topic is Intelligence Testing (the Binet-Simon scale, specifically).
1b) The chapter mentions Henry Goddard and his IQ testing at Ellis Island. The chapter uses Goddard as an example of why presentism is not a good way to look at history.
1c) I was unaware that an IQ test was performed on immigrants at Ellis Island as well as other medical tests. I was curious about what the IQ test would have looked like back then and how it has evolved since then.
A French psychologist, Alfred Binet, began working on mental testing with his own children, which started his interest in IQ testing. He and his colleague, Simon, set about to determine a way to test intelligence in children of various ages. Simon and Binet viewed intelligence as a combination of several cognitive abilities. In 1905, Binet and Simon worked to develop a scale to measure intelligence in order to classify children with mental handicaps, who were required to go to school but unable to perform tasks that other children at their chronological age were able to. They developed this scale and, in 1912, Wilhelm Stern suggested the name “Intelligence Quotient” for the measurement, and that the child's mental age be divided by his or her chronological age and then multiplied times 100 in order to standardize the testing. The goal of this testing was to identify children who were not performing at the same chronological age as their peers in order to get them extra help. This is considered the first IQ test and was the most popular IQ test for many decades.
Meanwhile, the superintendent of a New Jersey school, the New Jersey Training School for Feeble-Minded Boys and Girls, a man named Henry Goddard, travelled to France in order to learn about the methods other educators were using to work with mentally handicapped children. He returned from France and translated the Binet test in order to use with his own school. Eventually, Goddard convinced American physicians to use this test. He was invited to Ellis Island to help identify immigrants who were mentally handicapped, and in 1914, introduced the test into the courtroom. However, people were not being tested on a mass level until a Harvard psychologist, Robert Yerkes, tested approximately 1.75 million recruits for the U.S. Army.

http://www2.facinghistory.org/Campus/rm.nsf/0/9DEDE045369DD5F18525707B0075F9D7
I chose this article because it ended in .org, meaning it is probably a nonprofit organization's website. It also spoke in detail about Henry Goddard as well as gave an overview of Alfred Binet. This was a good summary of the beginning of IQ testing.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment.aspx
I chose this article because it was from the APA, or American Psychological Association. It also provided references for the content at the bottom of the page and the information was consistent with other articles I had read already. This article spoke in depth about Henry Goddard and his involvement with IQ testing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KEAow2cTIk
This youtube video seemed very well researched. It was a presentation by an undergraduate student, which means that he was researching for a grade, so it is unlikely that he made information up, and more likely that he researched the topic carefully. He seemed well informed and confident in his onformation. The video covered the whole time period, starting with Binet's observations with his own daughter, and following the evolution of the IQ testing.

1a) State what your topic is.
- Henry Goddard


1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
- Henry Goddard took French philosophy and created a scientific way of determining I.Q. However, Goddard also used this scientific form to deny people the opportunity of citizenship into the United States during one of the largest immigration shifts. This relates to the text because Goddard's method when looked at from the presentist point of view is a cruel punishment for those with below standard I.Q.'s. Although this does seem inhuman if we evaluate Goddard's action through a historicism view point the actions become just. 'American's' were living in a time when they were afraid of losing resources, and the classic "American dream". They were severely considered in their outward appearance to other countries, and doing what ever they could to cement their power status was a necessity.


1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
- Henry Goddard's action were extremely intelligent, and despite what presentist may think, he aided the scientific community with his contribution. The idea of Eugenics is also extremely interesting, the way the United States population was so focused on their labeling theory they were willing to go to extremes to produce, a better society. Today we may joke about an undereducated persons right to reproduce, but our opinions do not directly effect a person's life.

2)
- From today's view points (presentism) its hard to appreciate Goddard, and the work that he did to further psychology as a science. Goddard is often looked on in a critical nature, as most of what he did was related to finding people unworthy of living in the United States. Today Goddard's research methods violate many ethical boundaries, and his hypothesis is full of confounds, but that didn't stop people from buying into his message. Goddard was a firm believer in the genetics of intelligence, and thought that a child' IQ was directly related to that of their parents. Goddard's adaptation of the Simon IQ test was really not an adaptation at all, he translated it and made it culturally relevant. However, the culture that he set the test for was the United States, which worked fine when he was testing children familiar with U.S. culture, and who spoke english. How many immigrants in the 1920's spoke english, and were familiar with U.S. culture? Probably vary few. Goddard believed that 'morons' as he phrased it had distinct looks that characterized them as unworthy of immigration. He had two female assistants pick out those who looked feebleminded and those selected were given the IQ test. The low performance on the IQ test by large numbers of immigrants made Goddard assume that other countries were sending those who were unintelligible. Despite continued skepticism and criticism from others in the psychology field he continued his biased work. Goddard's work also provided a scientific justification for the Eugenics Movement. While Goddard himself did not support eugenics, he did suggest that separation of lower IQ individuals, morons, and the feebleminded all be separated into a self supporting colony. While today much of Goddard's work is looked at critically, his idea of an IQ test is still popular within school systems, but luckily does not have such detrimental effects for those who receive poor scores.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gif5-upJ5I
-This video provides and overview of Goddard's IQ test, and how he developed the adaptions to the French version.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment.aspx
-This website gives some background information on Goddard and his earlier life.

http://www.disabilitystudiesforteachers.org/files/TestingatEllisIsland.pdf
-This study gives information on how Goddard applied his IQ test, and some of the confounds with his hypothesis, and some of his ethical dilemmas.

Terms: Presentism, Historicism

1a) State what your topic is.
My topic I chose to talk about was Henry Goddard and eugenics.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This topic relates because in the chapter they talk about the early history of psychology and this was a huge move in psychology when the eugenics movement started to gain traction and IQ testing was used for this.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this because in a class last year we discussed how Hitler’s propaganda was largely based on eugenics (no surprise there) but then we talked about how one of the first places that the eugenics started was right here in America.

2) Henry Goddard was an early American psychologist who administered psychological testing at Ellis Island when new immigrants would arrive to America. Immigrants would arrive in America! Hooray they made it, the land of promise and you could make yourself a new life in America… but first you must pass a series of test to be allowed into the country, if you fail well you were sent packing back to your old life (if you haven’t sold all of it to make the journey to America). Henry Goddard was just part of a larger problem, eugenics. Eugenics is commonly thought of as the Nazi ideology, eradicating the Jewish population. Hitler however did not come up with the idea of eugenics himself even though he did though write about it in Mein Kampf. The idea of eugenics has been around since 1883 when Francis Galton sought to come up with a solution for the perfect race after reading his cousin Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The idea took major ground with the evolution rush into America and still has some remains today. During WWII the Nazi party adopted the ideas and some laws that 33 states in America had implemented into operation. These included sterilization of people for being deemed “feeble minded”, this included a 17 year old girl who was sterilized due to her feeble minded child and mother and her “promiscuous” ways. It was even quoted by an American journalist at the early onset of WWII that “Germany was beating us at our own game” in regards to raiding our nation of the lesser class.
How does any of this related to America today? Outside of the dark shadow that can be casted over America for potentially giving the base eradication idea to Nazis, there are still are processes of eugenics in America today. One interesting topic that surfaced was that from 2006-2010 148 women who were all held in California prisons had illegally coerced women into sterilization. How can this happen one may ask, well one reason many include that the supreme court ruling of Buck v. Bell, the ruling allowing the 17 year old girl to be sterilized, has yet to be over turned in the eyes of the courts. What will happen with modern technologic advancements may have much larger severity. With the “old ways” of eugenics a child was born and deemed unfit at that point, now we are able to look into the genotype of an unborn child and see what problems they may have i.e. Downs Syndrome. Once we know that child may have a problem parents can decide to abort a child. This can change the whole idea of eugenics by empowering the idea of a prefect or better race of human beings simply by eradicating someone before they have a chance to step foot on this earth. If we were able to do this years ago we may have never seem some great minded people such as Stephen Hawking, arguably one of the greatest theoretical physicist and cosmologist to ever live!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/opinion/sunday/douthat-eugenics-past-and-future.html?_r=0
I chose this sight because it gave me insight into relating old to new ways of eugenics and it helped me understand and learn about the idea of looking at a child genotype before birth.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/07/10/eugenics-are-alive-and-well-in-the-united-states/
This article talked about and showed me that even within the 2000’s people are still being sterilized in a eugenics manner, this was a great example of eugenics still existing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaH0Ws8RtSc
This video told me a lot about the history of eugenics and pointed out how we sort of gave the idea to the Nazis. I also learned off this video about the 17 year old who was sterilized and the fact that so many states had implanted eugenic policies.

1a) State what your topic is: Henry Goddard

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter: Henry Goddard was an American psychologist who believed that the intelligence of a person was based on inheritance and could be measured by something called the “IQ” test. It was stated in the text on page 10 of our book that he used this test to test the feeble-minded or immigrants from France. By looking at the IQ test they could see that some immigrants were unfit to live in such place so they were sent back to their native home. This topic is related to the reading because it shows how the IQ testing back in the time that Goddard was using it was a danger of presentist thinking within psychology’s history. Before the testing of our intelligence became favorable psychologists back in the day had little experience with it.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it: I am interested in this topic because I was actually more interested in Goddard and more of his contributions to the world of psychology. Finding more information about a person in the field of psychology gives me the goose bumps in a good way, I just want to find out more information about someone so I can relate their findings to what I might find out later in the year.

2. Henry Goddard had stated the outrageous word “feeble-minded” and related it back to those who were unable to score high in an IQ test, this word and he became famous throughout the world in the 1910’s. He also believed that our intelligence was inherited from our past, which also created this word feeble-minded or feeble-mindedness. From these words and phrases he also played apart in creating the word “moron“ to speak about those who were at the bottom of the totem pole in intelligence scoring, thus where the IQ testing comes into play.

In the eyes of some American’s this creation of the word moron and what he did to deport immigrants would be kind of like the genocide of Jews and other outcasts throughout Germany and Poland during World War II. He tried to take these test scores and use them against the less fortunate in the mind and deport them back to their country so the area could be non “moron” or “feeble-minded”. He wanted to rid the area of those who would create a negative place to be in so we could keep our country above the average for intelligence. He felt like segregation of those who were considered morons and of those who were capable of having a high IQ score was necessary.

After publishing what is known by “The Binet and Simon Tests of Intellectual Capacity” he convinced other American physicians to use this test and they started using it in 1911 and then later started using it in public schools to test children. Goddard then became the first person to ever use this type of test in the court of law and have it be apart of evidence if needed. The Binet and Simon Tests of Intellectual Capacity also helped place children in school where they would fit best for learning.

Since he was exposed to these different types of mental testing he believed to think that people who were mentally inferior, a.k.a those who were called morons or idiots, were a threat to society like stated in a paragraph above but this also created the thought that people with the title of an idiot or moron should not be able to marry, only to think that those people with that title will marry another of their “kind” and procreate a child who would be even more of a moron and a bigger threat to the society that they lived in. This then created the fear of the area to be contaminated of the “moronic race.” He then started to deport those with lower scores. His thoughts may not be the best but I somewhat agree with him about how our intelligence is somehow inherited by our genes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002751783 - I used this website to get a small further understanding of what he actually did and what he did to play apart in the world of psychology. It does not give that much information but it gave me great information.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment.aspx - This website gave me more insight as to what Goddard did with this testing and what he thought he could do. So it helped me understand a little bit more about the testing and what he thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gif5-upJ5I&list=PL559CDC872C6A04F9 – I watched this video done by a professor to get some more information about Goddard himself. This video did a great job telling me a few more pieces of information that would be useful for me to write my topical blog.

1a) State what your topic is. Presentism
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

Goodwin brings up Presentism vs. Historicism midway through chapter one and describes how it can be dangerous to think in a presentist way.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
This part of the book caught my attention because I have been guilty of thinking in a presentist way when learning about history and forgetting that people did not have access to the same resources as we do today. After reading that, it made a lot of sense to be careful about how I take in history and found that a girl in my humanities class asked the professor a question along the lines of Well didn’t they know that wouldn’t be a good idea, which immediately reminded me of this topic.
As Goodwin states his concern for how presentist thinking can be dangerous, I found that other resources have their concerns as well. One article written by a historian claims that presentism threatens to put historians out of business, while the blog I read agreed that there needs to be a balance of presentism and historicism, and another website brought up the point that thinking in a presentist way may lead to think in a bias.
Is presentist thinking all that bad though? One article brought up a quote from Stocking where he states something along the lines, that we are more rational now than we were in the past. However, they also bring up that we must first be aware of the events that occurred in the past, and then from there can identify what is historically significant. One website brought up that much of the history of psychology is to search for the issues that pertain to modern psychology. It makes sense, as we do tend to learn from our past after all.
I think it is definitely important to be self-aware of what causes oneself to think the way they do. I thought this article brought an interesting idea: when studying history about ancient Greeks and Romans, the Greeks and Romans did not think of themselves as ancient. People lived in ways that are almost unimaginable to people today. However, as one article discussed that new ideas did not come out of a vacuum, prior ideas definitely had some kind of affect to today’s ideas. For example, they bring up that the emphasis of controlling the observation of behavior from the Behaviorists helped create a foundation for the current definition of psychology and experimental methods. We can learn from past mishaps and determine whether historical theories are important or not.
Overall, it is important to keep in mind our modern day thinking and how it affects our judgment of the past. I learned from reading the articles and the first chapter in the book, it is good to keep an open mind about history and understand the entirety of what was all going on at the time of the event.

http://brandonanthropology.blogspot.com/2011/10/anthropological-theory-historicism.html
I choose this blog because it gave a good basis of what presentism and historicism is and related it specifically to the matter of social sciences.

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2002/0205/0205pre1.cfm
I choose to read this entry from the American Historical Association to get a better gage of why presentism is so controversial and specifically how they believe it is affecting them.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.csupomona.edu%2F~nalvarado%2FPSY410%2520PPTs%2FIntro.ppt&ei=b9YnUpWNMeTz2QXlv4HoAg&usg=AFQjCNF7fsY-lyHl8eljBpIQ-cicvd4iDQ&bvm=bv.51773540,d.b2I

I choose this because it was simplified into a PowerPoint format from a psychology professor that explained how specifically historicism vs. presentism thinking specifically relate to ideas in psychology.

1a) State what your topic is
My topic is “Why study the history of Psychology?

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Throughout this chapter we learn why studying the history of Psychology is important. This chapter discusses why we should study it and why it is helpful to know the history in order to be involved with the present. This chapter also mentioned how knowing the past is like a guide to the future.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this topic because I have always found history to be boring so I would like to find a reason as to why it is so important to learn about history in the first place. I also always thought that we studied history so we could learn from the mistakes that have been made in the past. This chapter gave good reasons as to why we study the history of Psychology and I thought that it made more sense than it has for me in the past. I would like to research this little to find out what other people think about studying the history of Psychology and the importance that they place on studying it.

2. The main question that I wanted to get answered is: Why is the history of Psychology important to study? One reason it is important to study the history of Psychology is because it shows us how far we have come and how Psychology helps us in today’s society. One example of how Psychology is useful in today’s society is when someone is working with children. Psychology has taught adults the best way to communicate with children with all different types of needs. Psychology has also influenced how today’s world looks and the role of Psychology has developed over time in society, involving the nature of authority, power, etc. so every thoughtful member of society should care about Psychology’s impact.
Knowing the history of Psychology also helps you understand contemporary Psychology. By studying the history of Psychology, you will understand how the study of Psychology came to be. You will also learn where certain beliefs came from and how Psychology has evolved over time. By studying the history of Psychology, you will learn that Psychology is one of the oldest and the newest sciences. It is one of the oldest because it studies the mind, which obviously studies of the mind have been around for a long time but Psychology has only been around for a couple hundred years.
Studying the history of Psychology is also important because it will help you understand yourself as well as others. You can better understand yourself by knowing more about Psychology and to do that, it can be useful to know the history of Psychology. Knowing the history of Psychology unites everybody because today’s Psychology has become so fragmented. By saying it’s become fragmented means that Psychology is broken up into many different subgroups, which is obviously different than what it used to be.

http://www.helium.com/items/1353220-studying-the-history-of-psychology
-I chose this website because it let me know that one of the main reasons for studying Psychology is because it shows how Psychology came to be.

http://hopc.bps.org.uk/outed/imp$.cfm
-I liked this websit because it gave many different reasons as to why studying the history of Psychology is important and it talked about why it is important in general and why it is important for academic reasons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1wKZqnsi6E
-I chose this video because I liked listening to somebody instead of just reading. However, I only thought the first couple minutes gave good information.

-M.S.

1a) State what your topic is.
I chose to look up more information about the different artifacts available in archives, particularly at the University of Akron.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
The chapter discusses several ways of collecting information about the history of psychology which relies heavily on primary sources (archives). In archives you can find the journals, letters, and many other laboratory materials that researchers have donated.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I found it interesting because of the different possessions researchers have donated to archives over the years. For example, Carl Koller experimented the effects of cocaine as an anesthetic during eye surgeries. Along with the rest of his possessions in the archive, other researchers found the left over cocaine that Koller had from his first experiment. I thought it would be interesting to look into what other things have been found and stored in the different archives around the U.S.

2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner.
Our book talks about the Archives of the History of Psychology (AHAP) at the Center for the History of Psychology. I decided that I wanted to know more information about it. I found a YouTube video of Dr. David Baker, from the Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron, was giving more information about it. Due to having parts of the archives and museum split, the Center decided they needed to move to a larger building. The University of Akron website was very helpful in displaying many interesting things the Center and Archives have available to view. They have Dr. Stanley Milgram’s simulated shock generator on display so patrons may learn more about his shocking (pun not intended) discovery. The Center also has several artifacts from the Stanford Prison experiment. Dr. Baker hopes that displaying unusual research materials that have been donated to the Center will attract more people to learn more about the history of psychology. The new building that houses the Center and the Museum can now showcase all of their materials in one location. The collection, located at the Center for the History of Psychology and also within the archive, is the largest in the world. I found something extremely interesting in my last source written by the American Psychological Association. According to their website, oral histories have recently been recorded and stored in different archives around the U.S. Beginning in 1986; APA presidents could record information given to them by previous APA presidents. Then in 1998, Dr. Wade Pickren began to interrogate and record information from other researchers. I found this interesting because I had never heard of that happening before. I also thought it would be interesting because oral history can give us a better sense of what the context of an experiment or idea was like in a certain era.

At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mmXwFGLMGo
I chose this source because I felt that Dr. Baker would be a good source of information about what is available to view at the Center for the History of Psychology. I felt he gave a lot of interesting information about the Center and the archive at the university. I felt that this video and the website from the University of Akron gave me the best information about the archive.
http://www.uakron.edu/chp/archives/
I chose site because it is the home of the world’s largest collection of psychological materials and artifacts. I felt this gave me a lot of information about what I could find at the Museum and within the archive itself. I also found it helpful that it states what I can and cannot bring to the archive if I choose to visit.
http://www.apa.org/about/apa/archives/oral.aspx
I used this article because I found it interesting. It did not really give me a lot of information to use in my blog comment, but I did find it interesting.

1a) State what your topic is.

My topic is unethical psychological studies.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

Conducting studies and doing research is as much a part of psychology today as it was throughout the history of psychology. Many experiments were conducted, and many proved to be beneficial, meaning they added to the understanding of the human mind, and psychology in general, in some way. Some achieved the results they sought while other accidently stumbled upon a new discovery or a new theory all together.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.

I would like to discuss the unethical experiments conducted, one in particular because there are far too many. Did these experiments benefit us; did the benefits out way the costs? Despite what many of us would like to think, often times references are made to unethical experiments conducted in the past. There are many experiments in today’s world that are considered unethical, and whether or not the benefits out way the cost is being considered. As technology and our understanding of psychology improve, I believe this will always be an issue.

2) Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it.

In psychology there are a lot of experiments that break the BPS ethical guidelines; however, a lot of the time they result in new psychological breakthroughs. Take Milgram’s study of obedience for example. It’s reported that most, if not all participants showed signs of stress such as biting their lips and digging their nails into their palms and two were even reported to have had seizures. But the experiment found that people will obey authority figures even when they are uncomfortable with the activity they are taking part in which has multiple applications to everyday life.
The Milgrim Study is a well-known psychology experiment. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale University, wanted to test obedience to authority. He set up an experiment with “teachers” who were the actual participants, and a “learner,” who was an actor. Both the teacher and the learner were told that the study was about memory and learning. Both the learner and the teacher received slips that they were told were given to them randomly, when in fact, both had been given slips that read “teacher.” The actor claimed to receive a “learner” slip, so the teacher was deceived. Both were separated into separate rooms and could only hear each other. The teacher read a pair of words, following by four possible answers to the question. If the learner was incorrect with his answer, the teacher was to administer a shock with voltage that increased with every wrong answer. If correct, there would be no shock, and the teacher would advance to the next question. No one was actually being shocked, the experimenters only sought to fool the “teacher”. A tape recorder with pre-recorded screams was hooked up to play each time the teacher administered a shock. When the shocks got to a higher voltage, the actor/learner would bang on the wall and ask the teacher to stop. Eventually all screams and banging would stop and silence would ensue. This was the point when many of the teachers exhibited extreme distress and would ask to stop the experiment. Some questioned the experiment, but many were encouraged to go on and told they would not be responsible for any results.
Milgram summarized the results in an article which basically stated ordinary people, just doing their jobs, and without any hostility on their part, can become agents in a destructive process. Even when the destructive effects of their work becomes clear, and they are asked to go on, going against morality, few people have the ability to resist authority.
This experiment does not have any clear benefits to society; the conclusions drawn from the experiment goes much deeper, showing other aspects of the human mind which would benefit society and the world of psychology greatly. I think that the side effects of seizures are horrid; however, the information gained for the masses from this experiment really may outweigh the maliciousness of the effects, from a utilitarian point of view. Personally though, I don’t believe the end justify the means if people or even animals are physically or mentally abused/hurt in any way.

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
This link explains Milgrams experiment, goes into detail, and explains the purpose and results.

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/12/top-10-immoral-and-unethical-psychological-experiments-2519332.html
This was the website I stumbled upon when searching for right experiment to talk about. It also gives insight on many other unethical experiments conducted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM
This youtube video gives some details about the experiment, but also contains actual footage of the experiment. The commentaries from the people within the video give a better understanding for the experiment and the results of it.

1a) State what your topic is. Rene Descartes
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Descartes could be considered the person to have given psychology its start. Although he was more of a philosopher, philosophy was what "psychology" had been called prior. Descartes had thoughts of mind and body duality stating that "the body and soul are separate" in his published The Passions of the Soul. Chapter 1 explained the history of psychology and why it is necessary to learn about the history of psychology. Since history of psychology is the topic, I found interest in one of the first historical figures of psychology/philosophy
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
In the latter chapter of this book, we read about Descartes and his thoughts gave me interest because of his thoughts on the pineal gland and his thoughts of soul and body duality. Plato and Aristotle had similar thoughts to Descartes, but put them in different words.

2.Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it.
Rene Descartes was born in 1596 and contracted tuberculosis from his mother, who died a few days later. Descartes remained weak his entire life but did become educated in his adolescent years. Being as weak as he was, he began doing "systematic Meditation" about philosophy, science, and math. Descartes was a very forward thinker of his time and described the dualism of mind and body. Descartes says that the mind or "soul", is seated in the brain's pineal gland doing the thinking, while the body is like a machine that operates by "animal spirits" flowing through the nervous system to cause movement. He believed that this "pineal gland" was the seat of thought and was the home of the soul. The mind of souls, residing in the pineal gland, was thought to sometimes become aware of the moving spirits around which cause conscious sensations. Descartes illustrated the pineal gland as a single organ in the brain ideally place to unite the sights and sounds of the two eyes and the two ears into one impression. With the little technology Descartes had, he was able to hypothesize about the pineal gland, the placement, and dualism of mind and body.

Sources:
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/177/Ren-Descartes.html
This website described his earlier years and where he went to school.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Descartes.html
This website showed illustration of Descartes books and of him. It also talked about his other ideas such as automatic responses of external events.

http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2002/descartes.htm
This site talked about the methods that Descartes used and how psychology was in the making and origination his hypothesis about mind and body dualism made.

Logan Ahnquist
1a) E. G. Boring
1b) This chapter talked about how E. G. Boring was one of the most influential historians of his generations for psychology with his theories and contributions to the field.
1c) When I finished reading the close up on E.G. Boring I thought to myself I need to more about what he did and what other major contributions he made to psychology.

2) Edwin G. Boring was born in Philadelphia in 1886, he went to Cornell University to study electrical engineering, in which he received a masters degree in 1908. After a year off he returned to Cornell in 1910 for an A. M. degree to start his teaching career. Boring soon became interested in psychology and he looked up to Edward B. Titchener, who gave Boring his dissertation topic. Boring was a teacher at Cornell until 1918 after he received his doctorate in 1914. He then became the professor of experimental psych at Clark University in 1919, then he taught at Harvard from 1922 until he retired in 1957. At Harvard he became the director of the psychological laboratory, while he was in this position he set his main goal to be to free psychology from being a sub set of philosophy. He wanted to make people realize that psychologists use an experimental method instead of just using the tools of philosophy. Boring's most famous works were not just experiments, what he was most known and remembered for was his writings and teachings. E. G. Boring is known as one of the most influential historians of psychology. He has written many books and journals about psychology, for instance "A History of Experimental Psychology" 1929. This book was considered his most famous and important work, trying to make psychologists "history-conscious". He wrote many many more books and even appeared on a TV show to teach psych to the general public, it was called "psychology one". Toward the end of his career and his life, Boring had many children and grandchildren to occupy his time. When he wasn't with his children or grand children, he founded and was the editor of "Contemporary Psychology" which was devoted to reviewing books. He also served as an editor of the "American Journal of Psychology" for more than 30 years. In 1959 Boring won the Gold Medal at the APA meeting which was for a "Psychologist whose lifetime career has made a truly distinguished contribution" he is known as "Mr. Psychology" and he is very deserving of that name based on everything he has done. Psychology would not be where it is today if it was not for him, he was the leader to get psychology to be thought of as its own instead of a subset of philosophy.

3) http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring
This talked a lot about his early life and his journey to beiing the great historian he was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Boring
This website really emphasized a lot on his writings and what he brought to the field of psych.

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/boring-edwin-g.pdf
This website had a lot of info on him and his life. A lot about his contributions and what he did after his career officially "ended".

I chose presentism as my topic.This relates to the chapter due to presentism being a way to look at the past. Presentism looks at past events, but it does not take on the morals of the past. Individuals who enjoy using the presntism view, look on back to the past and feel as if the morals and values of the past time period are the same as they are in the present.

Most historians and psychologists look down on presentism. They feel that it does not give a truthful or complete look on the past. Yes, it looks at past events and how they occurred, but those who use presentism feel that the people of the past had the same way of thinking as we do now. For example, when we look at slavery or the relocated of the Native Americans, most people would never think of doing anything like that in today's society. When these events happened, it was a different time; they had a different way of thinking and living. The people who lived during these events where raised differently than we are today. They saw no problem with owning slaves or moving the Native Americans to reservations, because that is what they felt they had to do at that time. We look back and think it is horrible, but we need to understand that it happened in a different time with different people who had a different way of living. Presentism does not recognize the change in people's values or morals. This way of looking at history, looks back on slavery and feels that the people of that time should have known better simply because we know better today.

Presentism is an interesting 'ism' or way of thinking, but most people will admit that it is not the best way to look at our past. How can we learn from our history if we cannot take a look at the big picture? We simply cannot. Historians and psychologists alike need to look at the differences between cultures and time periods. This is why historicism is a bit more promient.

Historicism, unlike presentism, emphasizes differences across not only cultures, but time periods as well. Both ways have there benefits, and both will probably remain in our society. It just depends on how you as an individual want to look at the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism
I chose this website because it gave a detailed look into presentism.

http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2002/against-presentism
This website took a look into what were some of the issues with presentism.

http://alexahuang.org/Publications/Huang_Presentism.pdf
I liked this website because it gave the reader a side by side look to compare presentism and historicism.

A.M.L

ALH

The topic that I chose to research this week was the psychologist Laurel Furumoto and her idea of “old” versus “new” history. Chapter one talks about this idea briefly in about two paragraphs so I would like to expand on the idea. According to Furumoto, “old” history of psychology refers to an emphasis on previous psychologist who had large breakthroughs and accomplishments. In the way of studying “old” history, we review these great psychologists past work and “classic studies.” However according to Furumoto, we should also be looking ahead and studying “new” history of psychology. One of her main points as to why we should also be emphasizing “new” history as opposed to only “old” history was because “old” history seems to be only a retelling of past events; things that are written about in textbook after textbook and taught in most every class over and over again. After a while, all of the repetition seems to become a bit monotonous and it would be more beneficial to start teaching new things. Also with the constant repetition of the same information over and over again, there is a higher chance that the information will become warped in some way; it is like the game telephone: you start out with one message at the beginning of the line and by the time it reaches the end, the message seems to have completely changed. The intention is the same with textbook writing: every textbook author has the intention of passing along the correct information, and most of it probably is, but with rewording and storytelling there is a very high chance that the information will get slightly warped in transition. As stated in the text and in multiple of my sources, according to Furumoto’s opinion old history has a tendency to be presentist, internal, and personalistic; whereas new history tends to be the total opposite with historicist, external, and naturalistic being its key defining features. Old history has an emphasis on analyzing history and key historical figures only in terms of present understanding within only the study of psychology. New history has an emphasis on understanding historical events with the knowledge and beliefs that were present at that point in time while considering the effect of things outside the study of psychology and with reference to the cultural and intellectual climate of the era in question. After Furumoto’s publication on the new history of psychology, on which her lecture given at Wellesley College in 1988 was based, it because a key component in the future progress in the field of history of psychology.

http://www.chronicstrangers.com/history%20documents/Furumoto%20New%20History%20of%20Psychology%201989.pdf
I chose to use this source because it was written by Furumoto herself after the lecture given at Wellesley College in 1988.

http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/58/04711280/0471128058.pdf
I chose to use this source because it seemed to be written in the style of the textbook but with more expansion on this particular subject with more mention of Furumoto.

http://books.google.com/books?id=JFNNBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=laurel+furumoto+biography&source=bl&ots=r3Ltl2uyIM&sig=ZNLj-nliqS5uzDRqqfbuyYPW8PA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SJ4HVK6gKoLxgwTR3oDQCQ&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=furumoto&f=false
I chose to use this source because even though Furumoto is only briefly mentioned, it comments a few facts that I had not read anywhere else.

1a)
Presentism vs Historicism

1b)
The chapter stresses the importance of looking at history from a historicist’ point of view due to the nature of the presentist point of view possibly giving a bias in regards to the courses of action.

1c)
I disagree with either point of view being the absolute way of perceiving history. I believe a proper, unbiased, and clear perception of history is only achievable through a combination of each view.

2)
In examining history, one faces the challenge of dealing with the contrasting doctrines of presentism and historicism. Presentism is a type of historical analysis that places emphasis on contemporary morals and ideas while learning about the events of the past – allowing moral judgments to be placed through interpretation. Historicism is a type of historical analysis that aims to view a certain time period from the perceptions of the specific location and culture of the period being examined, nullifying any modern judgments as much as possible. These two approaches to learning history are contrasting, where one pushes to view history as a whole and the other approach pushes to view history as segmented parts, creating a dilemma for rising students.

Presentism is sometimes regarded as a logical fallacy, being used as an approach to justify one’s own actions and beliefs, as done by 18th and 19th century historians. While this can possibly leave a strong misconception of the time period for the reader, presentism as a doctrine extends into philosophy proposing that “present is a knife edge between the past and the future and could not contain any extended period of time” via Saint Augustine, which is then supported by the theory of relativity in which that it creates a disassociation between past and future, leaving the present as the divider.

While most historians view presentism as a form of error, presentists argue that historicists are invoking the error for moral relativism, the observation that different cultures will clearly have different morals, in which we should respect them.

Historicism has many variants, such as Hegelian which stresses that the human society and actions can only be understood through the history, therefore the key is to understand the morals and ideals of said history as it builds upon itself, and New historicism narrows the viewpoint to only the cultural and social contexts, segmented the time period even further.

The ability to see from both historicists and presentists’ viewpoints is key, as having the passive nature of historicism in perceiving past events and tragedies allows students to take time to fully understand the context of the time period, and having the aggressive nature of presentism enables students to find some type of connection, whether emotionally charged or morally-conflicting, creating a stronger interest in the field of history.

Websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism
Used for a basic understanding of the doctrine, allowing fast digestion without complicating technicalities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism
Also used for a basic understanding of the opposing doctrine, giving a quick overview.

http://alexahuang.org/Publications/Huang_Presentism.pdf

Used to create a connection between the two approaches to history and myself, finding a way to relate and apply the approaches allows me to find a connection and supply a spark of interest.

Q.N.

1.
a. Henry Goddard and presentist thinking.
b. This topic (or person) is related to the chapter because Henry Goddard was a prime example of the dangers of presentist thinking and it’s effects on history, but more importantly psychology’s history.
c. I am interested in this topic because I’ve always been known to look at things with a very open and understanding mind based on the circumstances, which would associate me with historicism. So I chose to flip my perspective and learn more about presentism views and consequences.
When I began reading the text, what I found to be the most interesting was the introduction of so many names and terms attached with their importance to the history of psychology as well as history in general. The term that caught my eye the most was presentism, but as I continued to read I found that presentism effects history way more than we would think.
In 1913, just a few years prior to World War 1, American psychologist Henry Goddard developed an intelligence-testing program to identify “feeble-minded” immigrants attempting to enter America. If an immigrant was deemed “unfit” they were then denied entry and returned to their country of origin. An immigrant could be denied entry into America for numerous reasons: being a moron (a word he invented as a sub-category to feeblemindedness), being “obviously normal”, and any cognitive disability. Goddard believed that these people posed a serious threat and according to npr.org he also claimed that there was a link between low intelligence and criminal behavior. During this time in Ellis Island, Goddard sent assistants to recognize these “unfit immigrants” by sight and sight only. Goddard was held accountable for denied entry of estimated 80% of immigrants because of his invention of this intelligence program.
Now looking back in history most would say that Goddard is the “moron” and would question, “who in their right mind would allow this?” This is perfect example of presentism. Defined in the text as to interpret and assess the past only in terms of present understanding; presentists interpret historical events only with reference to modern knowledge and values. The problems with presentist thinking can basically be boiled down to lack of empathy and understanding of the time and circumstances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_H._Goddard
This website gave me the basis of all information in the paper

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment.aspx
This website gave me more detailed and accurate information of what happened at Ellis Island

http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2011/Goddard-Henry-H-1866-1957.html
this website provided more information about the IQ testing and how it was used on the immigrants.

MDS
I chose Historcism vs. Presentism because I thought these viewpoints were interesting and they were discussed in chapter one. A psychologist/historian from Wellesley College named Laurel Furumoto brought attention to what she called “old” and “new” history of psychology. Furumoto believed that old history is based more on presentist, internal and personalistic views. She said that new history views are based more on historicist, external, and naturalistic approaches. The definition of presentism is to interpret the past only in terms of present concepts and values. Presentism, can encourage a kind of moral satisfaction and self-glorification. Interpreting the past in terms of the present usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior. Presentism acknowledges of no arranged answer; it turns out to be very difficult to exit from modernity or our modern Western historical consciousness. But it is possible to remind ourselves of the virtues of maintaining a fruitful tension between present concerns and respect for the past. Historicism is the understanding of an event in the terms of knowledge and values that existed at the time of the event. Historicism is used a lot with Biblical use. The theological use of the word denotes the interpretation of biblical prophecy as being related to church history. Historicism therefore tends to be enlightening, because it places significance on cautious and rigorous interpretation of information.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism
I used this site because it gave good background on how historicism is used.

http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2002/against-presentism
I used this site because it gave good information on how presentism is used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism
I used this source because it was a great place to get started on presentism and was helpful in defining it and finding other sources.

For this post, I chose to research more indepth on the topic of historiography. It is discussed on page 17. What interested me in this topic was the emphasis the author placed on there being a difference between "history" and "the past:. I thought it seemed like an interesting concept, but one I did not understand fully. This chapter is an introduction to the history of psychology, and it's apparent that the author feels that historiography is an important, foundational piece of information for readers to know in order to fully understand the history of psychology.

So what is historiography? According to a youtube video titled just this, it is, "The study of historical perspectives (not necessarily historical events). A historiographer would not be interested in simply researching an event in history. They are interested in the different interpretations of that event and why there are so many interpretations. An example of a time I experienced this kind of thinking was in high school when we were learning about the reasons America decided to partake in WWII. One reason that was given was the Zimmerman Note.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBxb1_gp4y

1a) State what your topic is.
I decided to do Historiography and look further into writing about history
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This relates to the chapter because historiography is defined as writing about history, and how it is written, and what goes into making something as accurate as possible when we personally weren’t there.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I have a minor in creative writing, and one of the genres I’ve always been interested in (but afraid to write myself) is historical fiction. How does a person write about a time and a place and characters in an era that they were never a part of? What goes into that? I decided that I would want to look into that further, and that’s why I chose this topic over others.

Historiography no longer means simply the writing of history. Historiography is best defined as the study of the way history has been and is written the history of historical writing. One does not study the events of the past exactly, but instead studies the changing interpretations of events within the works of individual historians. This is an interesting concept, because even in the current state of things, a major event, such as the Boston Marathon Bombing, there were pictures and videos taken from so many different angles and views, and many stories came out that all said something similar from the people present that day, but they weren’t all the same.
There are many schools of historiography as well, and many of these are interesting and played into what we learned in chapter one. For example, one of the schools of historiography is Great Man history, which was discussed in chapter one and was called personalistic. Another very interesting school of historiography is counterfactual history, also sometimes referred to as virtual history. This is a new form of historiography which attempts to answer "what if" questions known as counterfactuals. It seeks to explore history and historical incidents by means of a timeline in which certain key historical events did not happen or had an outcome which was different from that which did in fact occur. I found this very interesting, because it is a way of exploring history in a new and innovative way. There is also a school of historiography that related to psychology, called psychohistory. Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivations of historical events.
The general school of historiography really began in the 19th century with the idea that history written from primary sources could somehow be related to the general, universal history. This is the kind of history that now stands against postmodernism. History in general is the study of the past, usually in narrative voice, and is chronological in nature. It is dependent on the cultures of the time, both during the era that it occurred, and from the current times. It requires an intense scrutiny of the past, and historians are integrated with multiple fields at any given time to get the best and most complete interpretation of the past.
There is five main parts to historiography. The first is research, where they must look into primary and secondary data. Then, they must organize the material into groups and into order, and then analyze it as well as evaluate the sources. Next, they must interpret the data and the knowledge that they have gained. And finally, they must communicate the data that they learned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography
http://www.librarything.com/topic/61376
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLlyDCT_0Is

KAB

This week I decided to discuss the Archives of the History of American Psychology, also known as the AHAP. The AHAP is a huge collection of psychological artifacts that have been collected and stored since 1965. This collection is what houses historical content from hundreds of different psychologists, and is what is used for primary sources for historians. Our text starts out with history; why it is important, the problems associated with it, and where it comes from. The AHAP plays a part in all of this. It is with the AHAP that historians can find their sources to continue their writing, that psychologists and students can continue their research, and that people in general can get a look into psychologies past.
It may seem like nothing special to some, but to me this idea amazes me. I had no idea something like this even existed. The amount of time and effort put into collecting all the things needed to put into one place is astonishing. To think a person’s life work can possibly be continued on because it is available to others minds.
The Archives of the History of American Psychology was started in 1965 at the University of Akron in Akron Ohio. It is the largest psychological archive in the world. It was opened to promote research by documenting and storing the ideas and history of hundreds of psychologists. It is used as a primary source when doing psychological research. Documents from over 740 psychologists fill the archives, along with photographs, media, and other artifacts. In 2002 the APHP became affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute and were given resources to renovate and open the Center for the History of Psychology. The center houses some of the most famous pieces of psychological studies. Things such as the bobo doll used in the Bandura experiment, the shock box from Milgram’s Yale experiment, along with pieces of Zimbardo’s prison experiment. Not only can you read about these experiments, but you’re able to see part of them as well, making research and history come to life.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/08/the_new_center_for_the_history.html

http://library.ohio.gov/marketing/Newsletters/TheNews/2010/October/CenterHistoryPsychology

http://resources.iupsys.net/iupsys/index.php/iupsysresources/58-world-history-archives/1189-history-and-mission

My chosen topic is zeitgeist vs. personalistic, which are concepts used to view history. Zeitgeist views the culture or environment of the times to explain how events and history progressed. Personalistic history gave individuals credit for historic events and concepts. When explaining how history has culminated to it’s current state, it is a difficult not to use a way of thinking that falls somewhere on this spectrum, zeitgeist-personalisic. As we continue through the text and topics we should acknowledge where our view falls on this spectrum.
I find both aspects to be appealing. The personalistic form is rather romantic to me. The idea of brave and passionate individuals altering the course of humanity for better, or worse, adds a touch of epic adventure to scientific discovery. In this aspect, I feel inspired and hopeful that indeed one human being, no matter how big or small, can have an impact. The logic of zeitgeist is undeniable, and is what I find to be the appealing factor. There are many powerful forces in humanity that push many people in the same direction. Alfred Wallace had a nearly identical theory to Darwin’s. If Hitler wouldn’t have existed it is more than possible that someone of similar power and direction would have replaced him. Yet, I believe there are some individuals that had serendipitous discovers that accelerated their fields significantly. Newton’s laws of physics and contributions in advanced arithmetic, and Tesla’s alternating current seemed way ahead of their time.
Both have dangers and merit. I believe when approaching history we should use, as in most cases, moderation, finding a healthy balance of both zeitgeist and personalistic. In which to tip in favor of will continue to be debated. In the mean time take advantages from both and keep learning!
All three of these cites I would not usually use for his kind of post. They are all are sources used for definition. I could not find any cites that had real thorough discussion on this topic. I think it was mostly because my topic is very general and philosophical, but I think it needs to be discussed.
http://books.google.com/books?id=iZwXnfYAo3oC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=zeitgeist+history+in+psychology&source=bl&ots=cBcSrcmFUi&sig=j8N9eUWWV7VbRr2RTjyiCwztFNo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JJgIVMnlJIb5yQTCsoDQAQ&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=zeitgeist%20history%20in%20psychology&f=false

http://www.iep.utm.edu/personal/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalism

1a) State what your topic is.

Presentism and Historicism and how it relates to history.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

This topic was found within the section discussing the multiple variations of how to look at history in a more critical way instead of accepting it and moving on.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.

I am interested in it because it requires a method of critical thinking that relates closely to the way the philosophy program is set up and allows for a deeper and more appreciative understanding of facts.

For the first week after reading a chapter primarily done with introducing the chapter and not being to in depth on a specific topic, such as depression or development of the brain, the topic I was immediately interested in was the study of the history of any topic. The idea of studying history is one that is not all to new to any student in an academic setting, however, discussing the why’s and the idea’s of the historical facts is usually not done and just breezed over. In the chapter the author goes into great deal about two competing ideas in the look at history in the views of presentism, and also in the view of historicism, while giving much credit to these terms to George Stocking. George Stocking has been said to have, “a more penetrating one that put the development of ideas within a historical context that often was missing from similar efforts.” This extra effort and development of ideas can be assumed to mean the ideas of presentism and historicism.

The idea of presentism is essentially to look at historical facts with the views and ideas of what is happening now in the present, and applying them to the situations found in whatever topic is being looked at. This idea has been applied in the field since the 1916, with appearances to the notion happening almost a half century beforehand. Some historians may attempt to look at history without these present views and notions, but, habits die hard and this is not a way of thinking that many people learn at a young age. Presentism is seen as primarily problematic because if a person was to compare any age in history to today, they could either feel superior to those back then, or they could misinterpret the social norms and think that what happens today puts situations and events in a much better light, whereas down the road it may be frowned upon. The downsides of presentism, much like a fine wine, age with time. The more time that may lapse between event a and the present, the more likely presentism will be subliminally applied and the problems aforementioned will grasp at the minds of the people. Presentism is not a bad practice or an evil, instead it is a natural mindset that takes place in the present time when looking back at events and applying what is known now, versus understanding what was known then, also known as historicism.

Historicism is the opposite of presentism; it involves applying the norms, practices, and customs of the time being looked at as opposed to applying the present day ideals. Historicism is usually practiced in academic settings because it requires a more all encompassing knowledge of the event, and leads to a better understanding of why the event may have happened instead of event a happened on day x. In a nutshell historicism can be said to be the opposite of presentism, and once you understand the idea of what one is, the other is usually easily graspable as well.

Both of these methods of looking at historical facts require much more than a simple date or time, and this is what drove me to wanting to understand them in a fuller context.

http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/07/30/george-w-stocking-jr-historian-social-anthropology-1928-2013 - I quoted the author on how Stocking brings that extra something to historical debates that aren’t found just anywhere else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism - Self explanatory, give the definition and much more information on presentism, both history and philosophy related. Article gave me a better understanding as to write a more coherent and better opinionated work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism - Same as Presentism.

http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2002/against-presentism - Used to show some flaws in presentism and it is heavily opinionated with some issues with the practice and use of.

1a) My topic is all about Rene Descartes. 

1b) The chapter started off with a section all about Descartes and the beginning of modern philosophy and science. It discussed his life and views on things such as dualism, his certainty approach and Discourse on Method throughout the chapter
1c) His life seemed very fascinating. He had already had such a crazy education at such a young age. I also liked the way he thought about things and his quotes such as “seeking knowledge in the great book of nature.” I was interested in learning more about his life and all of his contributions.

2)
Rene Descartes was many things including a philosopher and mathematician. He is known as the father of modern philosophy for his, “I think; therefore I am,” definition of a starting point for existence. He was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye, France. The town has since been renamed in his honor. Descartes was the youngest of three children. During the first year of his life he lost his mother and his father forced him to move with his grandmother. He was a great student and heavily educated. Descartes attended a Jesuit college at just the age of eight and at twenty-two had a law degree. However, one of his teachers influenced him to begin understanding mathematics and logic relating to the natural world. While there he studied a variety of subjects such as mathematics, astronomy, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. Eventually he went on to add theology and medicine into his studies. Finally he decided to, “resolve to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in himself or else in the great book of the world.”
Descartes traveled a lot and joined the army briefly as military service had been a tradition within his family. His main goal after his schooling was to discover the meaning of the natural world. He wanted to use more of a rational approach through science and mathematics, somewhat like Bacon was trying to accomplish. He was one of the very first philosophers of the modern era to attempt defeating skepticism. Descartes saw certainty as the only basis for knowledge and claimed to have the methods to obtain it. During the year of 1643 Princess Elisabeth had posed the question of how the soul could interact with the body. Responding to this, Descartes wrote a shorter work which turned in the Passions of the Soul. This work included a variety of psychology, physiology and ethics. He argued that the mind and body are distinct substances.
While in paris, Descartes came across Cardinal de Berulle. Berulle was extremely impressed by Descartes and gave him encouragement to start devoting a lot of his time to the study of truth. He began to live in seclusion and even moved frequently in order to maintain his privacy. He also lived in the Netherlands for a good chunk of his life. He then made his way to Sweden at Queen Christina’s request to be her personal philosophy tutor. He had fragile health throughout his life and would often spend all morning in bed. However, Queen Christina insisted on 5:00 am lessons which led descartes to contract pneumonia that of which he was not able to recover. Along with this, Descartes was never able to get acquired to the climate. He died in there in Sweden in 1650. His remains were taken to Paris’ oldest church but the myth remains that he is buried within the Pantheon in Italy.
Descartes never married but did have a daughter who died of a fever at just the age of five. Some accomplishments include his introduction of Cartesian geometry through his laws of refraction and development of an empirical understanding of rainbows. Descartes had also proposed a naturalistic account of the solar systems formation. and defined the idea of dualism. During 1647 Descartes was granted with a pension to honor his work by the French court. Some of his views regarding knowledge and certainty have been extremely influential over the past few centuries, influencing countless philosophers. Descartes is considered a very revolutionary figure. His first major work was the Rules of the Direction of Mind. As he rejected religious influence in his studies eventually Pope Alexander VII included his works into the Index of Prohibited Books. Throughout his career he maintained the importance of separating reason and faith.

3)

1)http://www.biography.com/people/rené-descartes-37613#becoming-the-father-of-modern-philosophy

This website contributed a lot of great information. It included a synopsis at the beginning then went on to discuss his early life, his journey becoming the father of modern philosophy, and ended with his later life and legacy. It also discussed a lot of his works and the influence which he had.

2)http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/descartes.html

This website included a lot of his famous quotes. It did not have a ton of information but all of the content was really good. It was nice as it was all in chronological order and included a timeline towards the bottom of the webpage including the important events in his life. It also included a lot of his most famous publications and mentioned some of his influences.

3)http://www.egs.edu/library/rene-descartes/biography/

This website was a biography of his life. It had a pretty good amount of information. It also included a lot of his publications. It started discussing his early life, went into his schooling and studies, follow by his most famous views and position on certain things.

1a) Edwin G. Boring
1b) Edwin G. Boring is quoted in the beginning of chapter one and is mentioned throughout the chapter. There is a "close-up" section that digs deeper about Edwin.
1c) When I reached the close-up in the chapter on Edwin G. Boring I was curious to whom he was. It caught my attention when I discovered that Edwin G. Boring was an engineering student and by taking the elective, elementary psychology, he became interested in psychology.
2) Edwin Garrigues Boring was born October 23, 1886 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was raised in a matriarchal Quaker household. Growing up Edwin was very interested in electricity which is what he went on to study. Edwin studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and received a masters. While attending Cornell he took an elective course, elementary psychology, and found the lectures "magic" which motivated him.
After graduating Edwin took a position as an electrician with Bethlehem Steel, he resigned after a year. He then taught science and he returned to summer school at Cornell. He took a laboratory course that made him change his mind on teaching and switch over to psychology. Boring joined Titchener's laboratory group and had a lot of research interests. A couple that the book state are human maze learning, nerve regeneration, the learning processes of schizophrenics and visceral sensitivity. He graduated with his doctorate in 1914 and taught the next four years at Cornell. In 1918, Boring helped with the US Army's testing work and became chief psychological.
Up until his retirement in 1957, Edwin taught at Harvard later in 1922. In 1934 Boring became chair of psychology department. He is known as the most famous historian who was able to separate psychology from philosophy.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Edwin_Garrigues_Boring.aspx - education and careers
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring -exact outline of his life
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/74187/Edwin-G-Boring - helped secure the dates of his life to make sure facts were true

1a) IQ Testing
1b) This topic relates to the chapter because the chapter is based off of how people were learning. This chapter was about how people learn differently and how people were being held back from furthering their education so they had to go to different places in order to learn. It was the IQ test that made it possible for more people to have the opportunity to further their education and therefore it was an important part of history in psychology.
1c) I was interested in this because I always wondered who determined the intelligence scale and how it was created. Intelligence is something that is important in society today and it continues to be important as we age our knowledge is supposed to grow with us, this is something that was important even in the earliest forms of intelligence testing so I was interested to learn how they changed learning.
2) IQ testing was first developed in the early 1900’s by Alfred Binet. During this time people were given more of an opportunity to get a further education and go on to college. The problem that arised though was a lot of people began to want to enroll and not everyone was fit for school. So the French asked Binet and his team to come up with a way to test individuals in order to determine if they are actually fit for more schooling. The test is different though that what most would think, the test was actually based more off of basic knowledge rather that what they learned in school, such as basic common sense. By using these type of questions it actually measured the mental age of an individual rather than just their intelligence, this factor was said to determine if an individual was ready for schooling or no based on where they ranked on the Binet-Simon Scale. After the testing in France took off it began to spread all over making it to America and being used and remade at Stanford University.
The actual term of IQ was developed by a man named Lewis Terman who was an American psychologist, he came up with this concept of creating a score of intelligence or better known as an intelligence quotient. The original idea was brought about in 1912 by William Stern but it wasn’t until the testing made it to America that it was put to use. Terman wanted to find a way to score individuals and so he did this by dividing the scores to come up with a single number. The score was computed by dividing the number of correct questions on the test and dividing it by the individuals age and then multiplying it by 100. This score was created by Stern and then later implemented by Terman.
It was in 1917 that the intelligence testing was spread into the armed forces. Around World War I there were a mass amount of people that were wanting to join the military and again not everyone is fit for the job. So the armed forces began administering testing to see if people would fit and be productive members in the armies. This is when the Army Alphas (a written test) and the Army Bravos (an oral exam for those who were illiterate) began. The test not only weeded out the ones who were not fit but it also showed who was fit to go where in the armed forces. It showed where certain individuals would excel while others would struggle and therefore making it easier to assign soldiers to a job that they would be proficient at.
The test was again revised later by an American Psychologist named David Wechsler. Wechsler first created the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and then it was followed by two more intelligence tests for children; Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. These tests were all made up of testing different areas of intelligence such as the adult test consisted of “four major areas of intelligence: a Verbal Comprehension Index, a Perceptual Reasoning Index, a Working Memory Index, and a Processing Speed Index” (psychology.about.com). The major difference though between the original Binet test and Wechsler’s test though were the comparisons. Binet’s test was based off of comparing what an individual knew versus how old they were; Wechsler’s test compared the individual’s score on their test to the score of other people their age. In comparing with other people in that age group they were actually able to find out if a person has a learning disability and where they rank when it comes to learning.f

http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologicaltesting/a/int-history.htm
I used this site because it broke down different areas that IQ testing is used in and how they began. Also, it explained how the test scores are used and why they were important enough to determine an individual’s future off of them.
http://www.iqtest.com/history.html
I used this site because it explained how IQ test scores are found, how they are calculated.
http://www.free-iqtest.net/history-of-iq.asp
I used this site because it explained the differences in how the tests were scored as the test changed. How they were looking for different things in the different tests.

the topic that I chose to discuss for this was the concept of nature versus nurture. this concept was briefly mentioned in chapter one and seems to be a concept that keeps popping up in psychology. no matter what psychology class you take this seems to be a topic of interest in all of them. Ive always been interested if one plays more of a role in the development of a person than the other or not. I feel this is a good topic as it is debated very often. for this topic the three aspects that I will cover are what nature and nurture both are and their viewpoints respectively and how it is viewed today.

Nature is the concept that genes and heredity play more of a role in a persons development. on this topic biological psychologist tend to lean towards this side of the argument saying that biology plays a higher role in a persons development. people that take this side of the argument are typically known as nativist. Philosophers such as Plato and Descartes believe that some things are genetic and are just inborn and occur naturally regardles of the environment (http://psychology.about.com).

Nurture is the concept that the environment that someone is raised or grows up in and social relationships play more of a role in their development. on this side of the argument behavioral psychologist tend to believe that nurture plays more of a role in a persons development. people that take this side of the argument are typically known as empiricist. theorist such as John B Watson believed that people could do anything regardless of their genetics (http://psychology.about.com).

nature vs nurture is viewed in different ways today. while there are still people that believe it is one side over the other there are also some that believe that it is both that make a person who they are. this perspective is sometimes known as nature x nurture. in this scenario nature and nurture can not be separated. one is always needed to achieve the other. for example some genes can not be activated without experience in a certain environment. also on the reverse side some environmental factors may not play a role due to a persons genetic makeup. for example a person may live in an environment with smokers but never smoke or get cancer if they do smoke. this factor would have to do with their genes.

http://psychology.about.com/od/nindex/g/nature-nurture.htm
Got a lot of general info from this site along with info about John Watson, Plato, and Descartes.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html
got basic info on this site along with empiricist and nativist outlooks.
http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/nature-versus-nurture
this site gave me the concepts for the combination of nature and nurture being the cause of who we are.

1) I decided to do a little bit more research on John Watson and his work with Little Albert. I am interested in this topic because I’ve heard about it so many times that I kind of tune it out whenever I hear it. But after reading the text I became more interested in learning about Watson and who he was as a person and what caused him to conduct such an experiment.
2) Three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment included the influence that the Little Albert experiment had on behaviorism, the identify of the baby known as “Little Albert,” and an more in-depth view of Watson’s life and his unreliability involving his experiment.
3) Its not doubt that Watson’s Little Albert experiment involving classical conditioning is one of the most known psychological experiments. It’s rare to make it through a psychology class without learning about his work. But after reading this chapter and do a little bit more research I was surprised to learn that I only know that very basic and surface information involving this experiment. Which is strange because I have covered this experiment approximately 20 times in my educational career. One thing I paid closer attention to with this additional research was the overall influence the Little Albert has in psychology. Watson wanted to expand off of Pavlov’s research involving classical conditioning in order to show that emotional reactions in people are as easily achieved as a dog salivating at the sound of a bell. Watson and his assistant Rayner were able to set the stage for behaviorism with this experiment and also observed stimulus generalization for one of the first times in history. After working with Little Albert and neutral stimulus, unconditioned and conditioned stimulus and responses, the psychological world has a break through and behaviorism quickly began to become a dominant topic in the field of psychology.

Another area that I was interested in researching a bit more with this assignment was the identity of the 9-month-old known as Little Albert. After doing some research I found many different accounts of a psychologist known as Hall Beck who tracked down and discovered the true identify of the little boy and his mother. Little Albert true name was Douglas Merritte. All of Wastons records claimed that, as an infant, Douglas was “unusually calm and well behaved,” and it also stated that not much seemed to bother or frighten him. Sadly, Douglas died when he was six due to hydrocephalus, which is a build-up a brain fluid that is a condition he is said to have had since birth.

That last point brings me to my final topic that I researched for this assignment. I was unaware of the larger criticism with Watsons experiment and how people are starting to view the research as unreliable. I also knew that the experiment was mainly criticized because of how unethical it was, but I thought that was all. After people discovered the true identify of Little Albert and his condition of hydrocephalus. Many believe that Watson did not describe the child accurately as he stated that he was “healthy” and “normal.” Psychologist discovered convening evidence that Watson knew about Douglas’s condition that he had had since birth and was very misrepresenting in his experimental records about the boys health. Another critisim of the experiment is that Watson and Rayner did not have any object to evaluate Albert’s reactions and only relied on their own interpretations. This is a major flaw to the experimental design and hinders Watson’s findings.
4) URLs: http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/a/little-albert-experiment.htm
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm
http://s.spachman.tripod.com/BNW/classicalconditioning.htm
5) Terminology Used: classical conditioning, Watson, Pavlov, behaviorism, stimulus generalization, neutral stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned responses, conditioned stimulus, conditioned responses, experimental design

The topic I found most interesting was learning about how Marion White McPherson and John Popplestone founded the Archives of the History of American Psychology. In this first chapter it discuss how history is presented and thought about. It set up a good understanding on how history is made and documented, it is the tip of the iceberg. As a senior, a lot of history about psychology can seem very repetitive. With any psychology major there is going to be an overlap of information and eventually it will build up. This is probably the first time I have read about the cofounders of Archives of the History of American Psychology. The first thing that came to mind was how I am going to be able to go and visit. Next I wanted to know how these two people came up with the wonderful idea of preserving history. Another aspect I wanted to know more information about was how they were able to identify what was consider worthy of saving and documenting.
I first wanted to get a better understanding of the two founders. Marion McPherson was born July 10, 1919. She received her BA in 1940 and MA in 1941 both from the University of Maine, she then went on to receive her PhD in clinical psychology at Indiana University. Her career was focused on child clinical psychology and the history of psychology. In 1961 she began working at Akron university were she later cofounded the Archives of the History of American Psychology with her husband John Popplestone. In her obituary it talks about how she personally felt that work should be remembered rather than the individual. She had a very extensive work life, she was very dedicated women. She also was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and had served one year as president of the Division of History. I wanted to know more about how John Popplestone viewed history and how he helped contribute to the Archives. John was born on October 30,1928, he received his BA from the university of Michigan in 1949 and his MA from Wayne State university in 1953. He then received his Ph.D. from Washington in 1958. John helped development of the Society for the History of Psychology. He also was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. The first items to be collected in the archives was class and lecture notes of John and Marion. The first outside collection to be donated were the papers of harry and Leta Hollingworth in 1966. The archives original only started in 924 square feet. After great expansion more was needed to house all of the new and incoming documents, in 2005 the Roadway Express trucking company donated a 75,500 square foot building on the edge of Akron campus. Next I wanted to know more information about the University and how I could go and visit or if needed do research. The Archives are found inside the Center for the History of Psychology. Currently right now they are not taking on any new researchers until 2016. Individuals may still go and visit, the reading rooms are open to researcher’s Monday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm. Some of the material is restricted, which does require having to make appointments. They are still accepting donations of materials. This first url is about Marion Mcperson the http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2002-10575-008 and the second is about http://ejournals.ebsco.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/Direct.asp?AccessToken=46P69Y58KSLEJS6L9T6PLCS5159L85TKPK&Show=Object and finally the last one is about the Archives themselves and how to visit and use the materials. https://www.uakron.edu/chp/about-us/

1) For this topical blog, I have decided to learn more about Marion White McPherson and John Popplestone. They are both relevant to the first chapter in our textbook due their efforts in retaining and organizing the history of psychology. Together they co-founded the Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP). I am interested to learn the history of both McPherson and Popplestone to better understand their impact on today’s understanding of psychological history.

2) In this specific topical blog, I would like to talk about who Marion White McPherson and John Popplestone were as everyday people, what else they are known for/how they got started, and dig deeper into what the Archives of the History of American Psychology is exactly.

3) I will admit, it was exceptionally difficult to find personal background information on Marion White McPherson. She was born in the year 1919 and passed away in the year of 2000, making her around the age of eighty one at death. It is said that she believed it was more important for one’s work to be remember than just the individual to be remembered. The lack of personal information and emphasis on her accomplishment really speaks for itself. Marion White McPherson was a clinical psychologist who had a knack for history.
One interesting fact that I did not know from just reading the textbook, is Marion White McPherson and John Popplestone were in fact husband and wife! John Popplestone was born in the year 1928 and only passed away two years ago on September 15, 2013. Popplestone attended Washington University where he earned his doctoral degree in psychology in 1958. Popplestone was also a member of the faculty at the University of Akron where he and his wife Marion White McPherson created the home of the Archives of the History of American Psychology in the year 1965.
The Archives of the History of American Psychology is also known as AHAP for short. The AHAP is currently housed in the Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. Even today, it is still considered the world’s largest receptacle of media, artifacts, monographs, and manuscripts relevant to psychology. One fun fact is these materials are available for research. I have a feeling I would enjoy experiencing the access to such large quantities of psychology history! Since psychology as a whole is a fairly new field of science, the Archives of the History of American Psychology is so important. It was founded in 1965, who knows how much more research we will accumulate in years to come. Thanks to the dedication to both Marion White McPherson and John Popplestone, generations of psychologists to come will have access to such an important piece of history.

4) URL 1: http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=8&sid=1de5207e-7dc1-428f-9fe1-cb04eba44d5f%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=46899104&db=ahl this specific link contains information about Marion White McPherson. I chose this link because my resources to gain information about her were extremely limited. She was known for her impressionable work on history as we know it today and not her personal history.

URL 2: http://centerhistorypsychology.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/in-memoriam-john-a-popplestone-1928-2013/ this specific website informs the reader of John Popplestone. I chose this link because it was extremely informative and the photographs really helped me get an inside look at who he was as a person and his accomplishments.

URL 3: www.uakron.edu/chp/about-us/ this specific link sends you to the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology home page. I chose this link because it gives the reader a great background of the Cummings Center, why it is the ideal place for the AHAP to take place, and background information on the AHAP.

5.) Terminology: Marion White McPherson, John Popplestone, Archives of the History of American Psychology, AHAP.

1) I chose the topic of why we should study history of psychology. This refers to chapter one since it is the foundation of the chapter and most likely a lot of the textbook. It is the main reason why we are taking this class, and to teach us exactly why we study it, and how it effects the present and the future. I am interested in it due to the fact that I enjoy history, and not always sure as to why I like it, and this helps explain why I may like it, and why it is important. I am a psych major, so clearly I like to learn more about my major, and all the people and contributions that make psychology the way it is today.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
-One aspect is why is it important to study history of psychology. The second aspect is should it be a requirement in college for a psychology major. The third aspect is what are the most important things to learn from history.

3) Synthesize/Integrate
-It is important to study psychology according to educators for graduate and undergraduate psychology majors to study the history of psychology should be a requirement. This is most likely as to why it is required here at our institution as well. Studying the field's history teaches us the mistakes and also successes. By understanding the failures, or successes, then we can understand how to apply them to modern psychology and think critically. David Baker, PhD, director of the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron, made an excellent statement about how the history of the field applies to modern psychology. His statement was this, "History provides perspective, context, a dose of humility, and it allows us to see the development of our profession in the larger cultural context." A great quote, one of many, that helps describe why this topic is important, and why we must learn from the past, to have a brighter and more successful future. What is interesting however, is that some colleges believe that it is a waste for student to learn this topic, and if it is required, then it is taking up too many classes, and not enough time for statistics. Some of the colleges that believe this are Columbia and Stanford. They believe that the field of history of psychology is narrowing. The American Psychological Association encourage and state that, "Training and competence in history is encouraged but say individual departments can decide how to do that. At the graduate level, APA’s Guidelines and Principles for Accreditation require doctoral programs to train graduate students to be competent in psychology history, but don’t require a stand-alone course." Halpern, who led the 2008 National Conference on Undergraduate Education in Psychology makes a great statement about how this topic should reassert itself and should be a requirement for the major. She states it perfectly, “At a time when we have all of this specialization that is fragmenting psychology, history is a good way of reunifying and helping us understand where all of these diverse ideas in psychology came from.” History is not just about learning dates and names, but applying their work to our experiences and studies today. To interpret and assess the past to understand the present is presentism, and one of the main reasons as to why study this topic. It is not as wise to focus on the contrast of presentism which is hitoricism. It is wise to understand what the past taught when it was during that specific era, but does not help to apply as well to modern psychology. It is essential to understand the past and the culture at the time. So that we can understand that they did not have certain technology or did not know of other studies to help them with their own. Psychology first began as a separate discipline when Wundt first opened the world's first psychology lab at the University of Leipzig in 1879. This helped put psychology in schools in Europe, and then later on in America. Psychology first flourished in America mainly thanks to William James, and his textbook "Principles of Psychology." Knowing how psychology first began in schools, helps teach about their findings that can still be applied to today, and why that it is necessary to study it in college. Without knowing the history of psychology, how can one answer the questions in other major courses like; what topics and issues should psychology be concerned with?
What research methods should be used to study psychology?
Should psychologists use research to influence public policy, education, and other aspects of human behavior?
Is psychology really a science?
Should psychology focus on observable behaviors, or on internal mental processes? Without knowing the history of nature versus nurture, free will versus determinism, accuracy versus inaccuracy, conscience versus unconscionable process, internal and external history, naturalistic history, and differences verses similarities, how can students properly grasp the concepts in other classes without knowing the details of aspects like these that contributed so much to psychology today. Studying the history of psychology is essential for a psychology major to fully grasp and apply what they have learned to modern psychology, and so it should be a requirement in colleges.

4)
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/02/history.aspx-This site is credible since it is the American Psychological Association, and had great information as to why it is important to know the history of psychology so we can learn from it and apply it to today. It also goes into more depth of the history of psychology a bit more than the text and gives examples that the textbook did not mention.

http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/psychistory.htm-This site explains that history of psychology should be a requirement for psychology majors. It even talks about good questions to ponder while taking the class, or before you take it. It goes into detail about about the origins of how the class first began and why it is important.

http://www.peoi.org/Courses/Coursesen/psy3/contents/frame1b.html-This site helps with explaining some of the most important aspects of the history of psychology. It goes into detail about the evolution of psychology, its history, approaches, and how schools contributed to psychology.

American Psychological Association, presentism, historicism, nature vs nurture, free will vs determinism, accuracy versus inaccuracy, conscience versus unconscionable process, internal and external history, and naturalistic history

The topic that I am choosing is Presentism versus Historicism. This fits into this week's lesson and chapter, because it is one of the sub headings in the section of Key issues in Psychology's History, in chapter one of the book. The reason that I am interested in this is because as I read through this section of chapter 1, I was intrigued that there is different ways to look back at the people and decisions made by them. Two of those ways are presentism and historicism, and they are two completely different ways to look at the same historical event, which I thought was pretty interesting.
The three aspects that I want to talk about in this essay, on this topic, are a description of both presentism and historicism, real examples of when presentism and historicism have been used, and lastly, which of the two I think should be used more often to look at history, based off of what I learned from my sources.
The first topic at hand is defining what presentism and historicism is. Presentism is to interpret and assess the past only in terms of present understanding. Most modern historians try to avoid this when viewing things in the past, because it tends to give a wrong interpretation of the subject at hand. If a historian is looking at an event in history as a presentist, they are not taking into account that things were different back then. They may look at the situation at hand and say, "what were they thinking?" But the reality of it is that back then they either didn't know better, or it was a normal thing to do. So, presentism isn't always the best way to view history.
Historicism, on the other hand, is looking at an event with the knowledge and values in existence at the time of the event. Georg Hegel was one of the first people to come up with this idea of viewing history. Hegel believed that all activities such as art, science, and philosophy are defined by their history. With that being the case, these activities need looked at and understood by the same historical view point. A historian that believes in historicism would look at an event in history by putting themselves in the shoes of somebody that was actually involved in that event. Instead of looking at it from a modern day view, like a presentist, they look at it as if they were living in those times. This seems to be a more accurate way to view history in many historians opinions, because it gives a better understanding of why they did what they did in the first place, rather than judge them right away for something unintelligent they might have done.
A real example of when presentism has been used is when Flannery O'Conner used the 'N' word in one of his writings several times, without apology. In today's society that is a word that should never be used in general, but most certainly should never be used toward an African-American. Historians today that are presentists, would look at O'Conner's writing with nothing but shame, because in today's society it is wrong, therefore he should have known better back then as well. On the contrary, historians today that are historicists, would take themselves imaginatively back to the 50's and 60's when O'Conner was doing his writings, and see if it was really something he should be judged poorly on. So, these historians would look at the exact same situation, but from a different viewpoint, and they probably wouldn't place any poor judgments upon him, because that was unfortunately how people referred to black people back in the 50's and 60's. Historians can change the way things happened in history, so it is better to understand why it happened, rather than to judge why it happened.
After viewing these sources, and learning more about presentism and historicism, if I was a historian, I would definitely view history as a historicist. It just makes more sense to me. People who lived in the past got us to where we are today. After reading chapter 1 of our textbook, I came to the realization that our world today is the best it has been. Often times we look back and say, "I wish I lived in that era," but we are just looking at the positives of that era, rather than the negatives, and there were probably a lot more negatives back then.
In conclusion, by putting yourself in the shoes of someone who actually lived back in a certain era seems like a lot more accurate way to understand why some particular event was done, rather than to judge by today's standards. I'm glad I got a chance to look more in depth at these two ways to view history, because it taught me not to just look at history from the viewpoint of somebody involved, but to begin to look at any situation from the viewpoint of someone involved. We can't change events that have already happened, so we might as while understand why they happened rather than judge why they happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)
I used this site, because it gave me a good definition of presentism, and how it came to be, and how people use it. I was able to use it throughout the whole paper, but specifically it was used in the paragraph that defines presentism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism
I used this site, because it gave me a good definition of historicism. It also gave me information about one of the first historicists, Georg Hegel, which was good information to include in this essay.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2010/09/14/3011235.htm
I used this site, because it gave me the real example of how people have view a particular historical event using presentism and historicism. The event was when O'Conner used the 'N' word several times in one of his writings. This provided a good example as to why historcism should be used, rather than presentism.

I chose to look more into the personalistic history just because I feel like it's a super true and relative topic to everything. It was discussed in chapter one.
The three things I want to discuss are Edwin Boring, naturalistic history, and eponyms.
Though Edwin Boring believed in a naturalistic history, he did say that individuals did hold a great importance in the field. As for his belief in, and the idea of, naturalistic history, in my opinion, it is like a snowball effect for the happenings of personalistic history. History does influence individuals, but history does not control their impact on the field. Eponyms are so relative, even if multiple people work on a subject. Yes, there may have been more than one working on research but whoever thought of the idea or contributed the most do deserve much of the credit because things would be vastly different without those individuals.

http://literarydevices.net/eponym/
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Edwin-G-Boring
http://www.studymode.com/essays/Naturalistic-Vs-Personalistic-Approach-In-Psychology-1054432.html
Terminology: eponyms, Edwin Boring, naturalistic history, personalistic history
I used these sites because they helped me better understand what I wanted to discuss.

The topic I chose to research this week was Henry Goddard. He was discussed in this chapter for his introduction of the IQ test at Ellis Island. I was interested in learning more about this man because I found it intriguing that immigrants were turned away from our country on the basis of intelligence. Also, I wanted to know how exactly the IQ test was used by Goddard to determine who could enter the country and who could not and how this IQ test came into existence.

As I was doing my research on Henry Goddard, I decided that there were three main topics I would like to discuss. First, it is important to know what led Goddard to his role in IQ testing at Ellis Island and how the IQ test was developed. Secondly, I want to discuss how the IQ test was used at Ellis Island and its impact on immigration before WWI. Finally, I found it worth noting the book Goddard is most known for publishing: The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. All three of these topics are critical in understanding the contributions of Henry Goddard to the field of psychology in his time and recognizing the changes that have occurred since then.

Before discussing Henry Goddard and his use of the intelligence test at Ellis Island, it is helpful to understand how he came to play such a prominent role in the field of psychology. Goddard began his career after college teaching first at USC and then at West Chester State Normal School in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t until several years later that Goddard began his research involving the intelligence of individuals when he assumed a research role at the New Jersey Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys in Vineland, NJ. Here he was interested in assessing the intellectual prowess of the students, but with little experience in this field he was not quite sure how to go about it. So, he did what many other researchers do and turned to work being done by other researchers in measuring human intelligence. He found his answer in the work of Frenchman Alfred Binet who had already created an IQ test. Using Binet’s test as a guide, Goddard created his own version of the test which was published in 1908 as “The Binet and Simon Tests of Intellectual Capacity.” Following this publication, Goddard began to promote the use of his adaptation of the IQ test throughout the United States and it gained increasing popularity as a way to gage the intellectual abilities of the human race.

The use of the IQ test became especially important as immigration to the United States increased in the early 1910s. As Goddard put it, the test was able to determine if an individual was an idiot, imbecile, or feeble-minded. Feeble-mindedness was the least severe classification, however, as Goddard concluded in his book on the Kallikak Family, these so-called morons posed the most danger to society. While idiots and imbeciles were clearly of less intellectual ability as exhibited in their words and actions, a moron was harder to recognize especially to the untrained eye. Additionally, Goddard argued that it was morons which made up the majority of the corrupt peoples in society, those individuals such as criminals and prostitutes who put a burden on society. Therefore, it was critical to detect these individuals and prevent them from entering the U.S. where they would take away from the intellectual atmosphere. Thus, Goddard’s version of the IQ test was administered to any suspected feeble-minded person at Ellis Island beginning in 1913. This resulted in a record number of immigrants being sent away from the States because of their intellectual inferiority.

Finally, it is important to note that Goddard viewed feeble-mindedness as an inherited trait. He supported his argument with evidence in his book called The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness which he published in 1913. In this study, Goddard specifically examines the two lineages of Martin Kallikak. One line of Martin’s descendants originated from his relationship with a reportedly feeble-minded tavern girl resulting in a long line of those with mental defects. The other line, however, was full of sound minded individuals and was the result of a marriage with a woman who herself was of sound mind. All of the descendants of Martin Kallikak faced similar environments throughout the years and yet there was a distinct difference in intellectual abilities. Therefore, through extensive research of these two lineages, Goddard concludes that feeble-mindedness was an inherited trait which could not be altered. Based on this conclusion, Goddard offers two different solutions in his book. First, he recommends that the feeble-minded be separated from the general population. Secondly, he advocate for sexual sterilization such that this trait of feeble-mindedness is not passed down to future generations and is therefore eventually eliminated from the population. Surprisingly, many states passed laws allowing for such sterilizations to occur.

Although Goddard’s ideas were eventually disproved, he remains an important figure in the history of psychology. He began the era of the intelligence testing which determined the fate of numerous immigrants. In addition, his advocacy of the test increased citizens’ awareness of the intelligence of others and perhaps contributed to the importance placed on intelligence for decades. It goes without saying that the man who coined the term “moron” will long play an important part in the history of psychology.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment.aspx

This was a great website which described the work which eventually led to Goddard’s prominent role in the field of psychology especially IQ testing. It helped me understand how he became a leader in the field and how he developed, used, and promoted his version of the IQ test.

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/10/267561895/it-took-a-eugenicist-to-come-up-with-moron

This website gave me good information on the classifications within the IQ test and its role in determining the admittance of immigrants at Ellis Island.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Goddard/

This website which was a link from Indiana State University helped me further understand the research Goddard conducted on feeble-mindedness leading to the conclusion that this was an inherited trait. It also gave me insight into Goddard’s proposed solutions for the problem.

1) I decided to do more research on personalistic versus naturalistic theory. It fits into this weeks chapter because it covers different ways to look at history. I think that these are two interesting ways to look at history because many people go back and forth between the two theories without realizing it.

2) In this assignment I would like to talk about the definitions of both personalistic history and naturalistic history. Then I would like to talk about examples of both versions of history. Finally I will talk about how I think they both need to be used when talking about history based off of the research I did.

3) First I would like to talk about what personalistic history means. The personalistic view says that important events in history are the results of individuals. This is sometimes called the “great man theory,” which says that individuals are born leaders and they will take over the leadership position when they are needed. One view of the great man theory says that individuals are chosen by supernatural forces, and another says that they are simply born with these gifts. The naturalistic history view emphasizes the forces of history influence individuals. There are two different parts to this theory also, physical and psychological. The physical form says that humans are affected by the land around them, such as northern territories learn to adapt to the colder temperatures. The psychological form says that human behavior is predictable if their background and situation are known. This is also applied to society when the behaviors of the individuals who make up that society are predictable.

Next I would like to talk about moments in history that these topics address. Personalistic history centers around the person, and how they come to power. Some people who might come to mind of people who rose to power right when the situation needed it would be President Eisenhower or Winston Churchill. These leaders rose to power just as the situation needed them. The naturalistic history might say that if either of these men had died at a young age another would have stepped up and would be the leader that that time period needed. It would say that because the situation needed them, there would be a leader ready for it.

I believe that there should be a combination of both of these views of history taught in history classes and books. The personalistic view shows how different actions can shape history. It can teach us why some leaders believed that they were chosen to do something, such as kings and queens who believed they had a divine right to rule a country. The naturalistic view shows that there is a regular manner in which society operates, and when all the components are known, humans are predictable. One example of this is the French Revolutions. After overthrowing one monarchy,eventually another monarchy took over, replacing what the revolution had just tried to overthrow.

4) http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/evansr/EVANS1.htm - I chose this URL because it gave a good overview of personalistic and naturalistic history. I used this to give my definitions and examples.
https://books.google.com/books?id=HEcwBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=bl&ots=nFPdYzSH-v&sig=anpIGlpazvNqgbN049S3GGOyRQw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBWoVChMIxrXor9zZxwIVC36SCh0jvAyj#v=onepage&q&f=false - I used this book excerpt because it covered the naturalistic viewpoint. I used this URL to understand different types of examples for the naturalistic history view.
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/theories/great_man_theory.htm - I used this URL because it covered the great man theory. I used this to define the great man theory and also to come up with different examples of personalistic history view.

5) Personalistic history, naturalistic history, the great man theory.

1) I am going to talk about presentism vs historicism. This fits in with this weeks chapter because the book about these two different types of ways to look at our history.

2) In this assignment I will talk about the definition of presentism and talk about pros/cons. I will also talk about historism and talk about pros/cons. Lastly, I will talk about how both approaches can and should be used in today's society.

3) Presentism is when a person uses present-day attitudes to interpret past events in our history. One of the biggest problems with presentism is that it can lead a person to feel morally superior over those who were actually involved in the historic event. It is also creating a shift in how people think, causing them to think more about modern society and less about the events from the distant past.

Historicism is when a person study historical events/people while using a historical context. This means that when a person reevaluates an event that has happened in the past they look at it from that point of view. The biggest downfall of this approach is that sometimes we need to live in the present, we cant do what was done in the past because it will no longer work.

This brings me to my final aspect of why we should use both approaches in today's society. Presentisim should be used because by looking at things that were done in the past and comparing them to what is happening now can help us as a society to learn from out mistakes and grow stronger. We should use historicism because we can look back at history and be proud(usually) of what we did, and how well we handled the situation.

https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2002/against-presentism --> I used this URL because it gave a good definition and also talked about why it is not a good thing

http://anthrointro.blogspot.com/2008/04/george-stocking-jr-on-limits-of.html --> I used this URL because i felt that it gave a good definition of historicism and also gave some good pros and cons.

http://wordsmith.org/words/presentism.html --> I used this URL because it also gave a good definition of presentisim as well as some good examples

The Great Man theory was popularized by Thomas Carlyle in the 1840’s. It theorized that history is impacted by “great men”. It also calls such men heroes, but I personally would leave that word out of the equation (due to the fact that some of these men we perceive as great villains). Carlyle is quoted in saying that “The history of the world is but the biography of great men”. His list of great men included Muhammad, Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Rousseau (French Philosopher who influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe [Had to look this guy up]), Pericles (Greek builder of the Athenian Empire), and Napoleon.
The Great man theory faced major criticism from Herbert Spencer who thought these “great men” were products of their social environment. He was quoted in saying that “You must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown.... Before he can remake his society, his society must make him”, which seems true enough also.
There is the boring history and research part of the blog.
Now I personally think The Great Man theory/ Person Centered History has a lot of merit. If you were to erase anyone of the aforementioned men from the timeline our world would be drastically different (even the ones I didn’t know by name). Take Sigmund Freud out of our timeline (no matter how much we might loathe him) and we might not be writing these blogs right now. Take the Wright brothers out and boom, no plains (at least not the ones we are used to). Take Hitler out, and who knows what the world would be like.
There are thousands of people who shaped the world we live in today, and some today that may be remembered thousands of years from now (if the human race lives that long, but that’s another blog). There is no denying that without these men the world would be different, but were they products of their society? In part of course, but what allowed these men to become great, and focal points of history? Could anyone in the 1900’s become Adolf, and built such a fallowing? Could anyone in 330 BC have taken Alexander the Great’s place? Could any scholar in the 1650’s have discovered the same things as Newton? Or are these instances, discoveries, and people fixed points in time (as the doctor calls it).
Suppose you were to switch a baby Newton and a baby Alexander in time… do you think we would here about Isaac The Great, or Alexander’s laws of physics? Probably not, there discoveries and heroisms resulted from themselves and the places they lived. Switched in time they may just have lead ordinary lives, and died... and then been forgotten to history like billions of others. These men deemed great were the right men, in the right time, with the right vision (however corrupt it may be), and the right genetic code to get their job done.
But this begs the question how much does one of those billion forgotten to history really matter? Could one of them be losses or erased with no consequence to the timeline? Could Joe who was born in 1890 and died in 1957 who never married and had no children cause a ripple in time if he was removed? But I guess that falls into chaos theory too much for this blog.
I see allot of similarities between this Great Man theory and Life Course prospective, only on a much grander scale. We learn to explore our new world (Alexander), we discover things about ourselves Buddha, we discover things about the world around us (Newton), we experience the loss of loved ones (Hitler), we take that pain and loss and use it to relate and understand those around us (Freud), when we die (Tuesday’s with Morrie).
We are along for the ride on our specie’s life course, who knows who could be the next focal point… the next great thinker, or even the next malevolent dictator. What circumstances could arise for someone to use their inner altruism and make their mark on history. Or using a term by Zimbardo, what scenario and situation could play out and have a Lucifer Effect; the next Abu Ghraib.
Is the “power” really in all of us to make our mark on the world for better or worse like our teachers always told us, or is that power only in a select few when conditions are met? Is the sky and beyond really the limit for us all or is there a glass ceiling that only a few can know how to break?
I realize that there are allot of questions here and not many answers, but hey I’m a psychology student, not a master in philosophy, I don’t know the real answers.

Sources:
http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-most-influential-people-of-all-time?&var=2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory

1)Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.

I have chosen to do this weeks blog post on Edwin G. Boring. He fits into what we have read this week because he is one of psychology’s first historians. I am interested in him because he is one of the people who pushed to get psychology in a department separate from the philosophy department at Harvard. If it were not for him, who knows how long it would have taken to get psychology away from philosophy. I find people who go against the grain and push for important things to be very interesting.

2)What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

I will be talking about Boring’s time at Harvard, one of the mistakes he made as an experimental psychologist and what his actions did for the history of psychology.

3)Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize* them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

Boring went to college at Cornell University to get a masters degree in engineer. During the time he was going to school there, he took one psychology class. After teaching engineering for a while, he went back to school to get his doctorate and became invested in psychology. When he took the job at Harvard, psychology was in the same department as philosophy. Boring thought that psychology and philosophy didn’t belong in the same department because there were no controls in philosophy. All of the knowledge was based off of theories where psychology needed to be based off of scientific fact. By bringing this point up, he ended up splitting the department making a separated department for psychology. When talking about his success in splitting the department he said, “The Zeitgeist had this event up its sleeve all along. Thus I had another lesson as to how the free action of personal will in a naturalistic world is a delusion,” which means he believed that the time and place was correct and he was a slave to history and free will of one single person didn’t affect the outcome of the splitting of the departments.

One of the interesting mistakes that Boring made was in 1942 when he misinterpreted a German scientists neurological taste findings and created a diagram of what he thought the taste senses were (sweet, bitter, salty, and sour). The German study actually found that there are small differences in the amount of food needed to stimulate different tastes on each section of the tongue. The whole tongue actually has all of those different receptors on every part of the tongue and there is another taste called umami which is a meat taste.

Despite the mistakes Boring did make, splitting psychology form philosophy was not one of them. Many things would be different in psychology today if he hadn’t realized that psychology needs to be based off of facts and needed to have constants to compare experimental data to in the psychology field. Who knows how every psychology majors career path could have gone if psychology hadn’t split from philosophy. Would it have broken off eventually? What if it was still all considered theoretical? Good thing we will not have to find out how it could have been because Edwin Boring knew what questions to ask and made the change.

4)Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring: This site gave me insight to Edwin’s early life, when and where he went to college and how he ended up at Harvard. I knew I could trust the facts because it came from an encyclopedia.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/5/31/e-g-boring-pat-dinner-with/: I used this sight because it was an article that came from Harvard. It gave me a lot of insight to what Boring actually did and said to get the philosophy and psychology departments to separate. This article contributed to my blog the most and I found it to be the most interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90LrqKFhx_g: This is a video about taste sensors that are found on the tongue and how it is a big mistake that Edwin had created the diagram for sweet, sour, bitter and salty to be in specific spots on the tongue. This contributed a little bit to my post.

5) Terms: Edwin G Boring, Zeitgeist, naturalistic

1) The topic I have chosen to research, is Henry Goddard and his translation of the Binet IQ test into English. The chapter spoke a little about the usage of the Binet test on Ellis island and I wanted to find out more.

2) Three aspects I am going to research and cover are, the Binet test, what immigrants were thinking at this time in history, and the mark Goddard left in the history of psychology.

3) The Binet Simon test was originally to target the intelligence of children varying from age 3 to 12. Psychologist Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon believed in a standardize way of measuring the intelligence of the children by testing them on things like repetition, memory, abstract, comprehensive, and definition questions. From this test the children would be categorized, based on how they did, Advanced being the best, average, and retarded being the worst. From there the children would be treated accordingly to how they scored on their test.

The book kind of talked about some of the things Goddard accomplished throughout his studies, and he really had a lot going on. His work during 1913 with immigrants was just one of many. I also found that he was the first to introduce the test to public schools and the court of law. He also helped with the law in regards to special education for deaf, blind and mentally handicapped students. He finished with The Kallikak Family which the book also talked about and is one of his more popular viewed works. All in all Goddard left a big footprint in the Psychology field, especially during the early 20th century.

Goddard used his modified version of the test on immigrants passing through Ellis Island during 1913. 70 percent of these immigrants were Easter and/or Southern Europeans. why so many from that area? During this time Russia, Austria and Germany were in war with Japan and the Russian empire was on the decline with revolts of the Tsar 1905. On the other side, why was america so appealing. During this time the wright brothers and the idea of flying was blooming. Henry Ford had created the assembly line and plenty of factory and construction jobs. Jobs that required little experience and not much training. We now understand what kind of immigrants were coming to america and what attracted them.

4) http://childpsych.umwblogs.org/intelligence-testing-2/binet-simon-scale/ -This URL gave good examples of what the Binet Simon test was trying to pin point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia_(1892%E2%80%931917) -Good ole fashion wiki gave me a quick background to Russian history during the time of large percentages of eastern Europe immigrants coming through Ellis Island while Goddard was there.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment.aspx -This sight really gave me an over view of major accomplishments Goddards work made.

1) I decided to do some exploring on personalistic history, or the Great Man theory. The reason why I chose this topic, is because it interested me that one person could change the course of history so much. And I decided that I wanted to learn more about what the original theory was.

2) The three aspects about this topic that I will be discussing are how the Great Man theory was derived, Eponyms and their impact on eras, and Edwin Boring and the personalistic approach.

3) The Great Man theory is all about how history would not be the same without the achievements and contributions from certain men in time. These men have altered the course of history, and we wouldn't be where we are today without them. The theory says that if the men hadn't made the events happen, many of them never would have occurred. Like it says, the man is the one who makes the times.

When going along with the theory, the term eponym comes about because many eras and times in history are named after the men that made the biggest impact and influenced history. While the word eponym doesn't just apply to specific points in history being named after men, it's important for the personalistic approach. There are certain men who have made such great attributions to history that there is no other way to remember that time period than by what they did.

While the eponyms that people hear and know about men who have influenced history, Edwin G Boring had a different take on things, promoting the naturalistic theory. He believed that forces, and the roles of cultural, social, and intellectual climates at the time influenced the men to do what they have done in history. Boring instead had a reason why people were so quick to accept the Great Man theory or the personalistic view is because humans need heroes and personal recognition in their life. But no matter how great both arguments, whether for personalistic or naturalistic, there will never be a decision about which one is actually the right one.

Terms: Personalistic History, Naturalistic History, The Great Men Theory, Edwin G Boring, Eponyms

Sites:
https://books.google.com/books?id=_u1GBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=the+great+man+theory+personalistic+history&source=bl&ots=iSF49h7asU&sig=gm2NA1dotAeBu2qdYq82RbcYjAg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMI7djY7ILaxwIVkBiSCh251ABG#v=onepage&q=the%20great%20man%20theory%20personalistic%20history&f=false
https://www.wordnik.com/words/eponym
https://books.google.com/books?id=1Yn6NZgxvssC&pg=PA420&lpg=PA420&dq=edwin+boring+personalistic+vs+naturalistic&source=bl&ots=rCiIGs9x1I&sig=0ChCQqj-nyJf5mmLpQxV9R3l6Vc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwA2oVChMIrKfgjJDaxwIVx46SCh2mSwfF#v=onepage&q=edwin%20boring%20personalistic%20vs%20naturalistic&f=false

1) Topic: Edwin G. Boring; Boring was mentioned in Chapter one briefly at the beginning. He was also discussed later in the chapter in more detail about his effect on the history of psychology. I was interested in this topic because Boring was referred to throughout the chapter, making him appear to me as very important. Yet, I did not feel I knew as much as I should have about him.

2) 3 Aspects: Personal; Attributions to psychology; Modesty

3) Explain:

Edwin Garrigues Boring was born in Pennsylvania on October 23, 1886. He grew up in a large, female-dominated household, including three older sisters and a great-great-Aunt. Some people doubted the upbringing of Edwin Boring due to the strongly female family, some believing these women restricted Boring in masculine activities. It is intriguing to view someone's past to determine why one's future actions are as they are. For example, Boring was well-known for his study of women in psychology. This interest of his was likely, intentional or not, due to his background of growing up in a woman-dominated household.

Boring's attributions to psychology can not be ignored. He is one of the first historians of psychology. In fact, he was known as "Mr. Psychology" during his lifetime. He wrote the "History of Experimental Psychology," which was an incredible success, leading to more books to follow. In 1922, Boring began working at Harvard University. By the 1930s, Boring had distinguished a psychology department from the philosophy department. This is interesting because Boring was originally studying electrical engineering, which is clearly science related. Although he left that particular field of science, psychology remains a science. Boring was president of the American Psychological Association. About 1960, the American Psychological Foundation awarded Boring a gold medal for his achievements in the field.

Despite his many achievements and success, Boring was a typical, humble, "hodgepodge" person. The biographical memoir did a fantastic job of describing Boring as a relatable person and not an unrealistic image of a famous person. This could be because the author of the biographical memoir was one of Boring's students, S.S. Stevens. This means Stevens had met and spent a fair amount of time with Boring, so his description of Boring would be more relatable, more real. Boring also seemed to be very honest and humble. After taking the Harvard position, he was offered several financially better jobs, but decided to continue at Harvard because he felt he was needed there more. He also describe his on life as "hodgepodge." He had several, varying achievements, interests, and skills, Stevens reminds the readers that Boring started life as just "an empty organism." Edwin G. Boring did not believe he was anything spectacular, which is part of what makes Edwin G. Boring so spectacular.

4) URLs:
http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/boring-edwin-g.pdf

I chose this site because it appeared reliable and full of a lot of information. In reality, it contributed to my post significantly. The majority of my research comes from this memoir written by one of Boring's own students.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring

I chose this site because it appeared reliable, and I wanted a broad description of Edwin Boring. I thought an encyclopedia would give me that broadness. I used a fair amount of the information from this site to construct my post.

http://www.isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k3007&panel=icb.pagecontent44003%3Ar%241%3Fname%3Dhistoricprofs.html&pageid=icb.page19708&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent44003&view=view.do&viewParam_name=boring.html

I chose this site because it appeared reliable, as it was a directory of staff at Harvard University. This site had a limited amount of information, so the main purpose of this source was to support other information found in my other sources.

Topic Research
1. (Topic) I did my research on mental health and 9/11.
(How does it fit?) Through Naturalistic History we can examine what fuels people through historic events. I examined what happened to people after 9/11 in the mental sense. I learned about how many different perspectives that people have involving who was affected by 9/11. Naturalistic history of the 9/11 events brought about an increase in the studies of PTSD and also took a deeper look into how terrorist attacks affect people.
(Why am I interested?) I am just really curious how catastrophe can change people. Not only the people involved but also the people who try to help those affected. I constantly try and put myself in other people’s shoes. I tried to put myself in the shoes of those people trying to mend the pain of those aversively affected by 9/11.
2. (3 aspects) National effects of 9/11, Personal impact of 9/11, Development in studies.
3. (National) Diving into this topic of 9/11 is pretty easy to get into because I was immediately interested in the situations that changed people’s lives forever. This event was unexpected and highly impactful. But what were the National effects of 9/11. As a nation we saw a huge spike in airport security. We see new security technologies spring out like wildflower. This includes the formation of Homeland security. As a nation we put our foot down and said “never again”. But what does that mean to the history of psychology? Advances. New procedures are taken place and psychologist are needed to interpret these changes. People step up and look into how to help those mentally torn from the events on September 11th. I even read that interpretations and evaluations needed to be made to help those mentally affected because no one was prepared in how to handle clients in a terrorist attack. This is what the nation went through following 9/11, but what did individuals go through? These are internal history derived.
(Personal) When discussing external history we can look at some issues here. Firefighters were one of the first groups that went through counseling. Here psychologists found that old counseling methods were ineffective and they had to develop an entirely new method. PTSD was a huge issue following the attacks. Even people who were not in the trade center or even near the trade center were experiencing triggers of previous PTSD panic episodes. One of the most interesting things I read was that retired firefighters from 9/11 on average had longer lasting effects than those who were still working. This was insane to me. I always thought it would be those who were surrounded by burning buildings following 9/11 would have the most problems. This was because those who retired had more time to sit and think about the events that transpired, and in a result were haunted longer.
(Developments) I was able to find that studies that were done previous to 9/11 regarding PTSD did not look into the effects of a terrorist attack vs. typical “war PTSD”. Researchers and psychologists quickly had to integrate ideas and theories to treat those who were affected by 9/11. Not only were there new studies that needed to be done there was a plethora of different circumstances. Weather you were indirectly involved, or whether you had survivor guilt. Even family members had to find professional help to cope with lost love ones. Not only did people need help coping but the government needed to develop new protocols and interrogation tactics. With that we see alterations of group objectives. CIA for example went from spying missions to hunting missions. All these changes have an effect or chain reaction leading to other events.
4. (URL’s)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-changing-mental-health/ This is an article from Scientific American that discusses the psychological situations that have come from 9/11. Focused around mental health the article depicts perspectives from the event itself, Terrorism fears, and emotional recall from the anniversary of 9/11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRiqz_WnYxc This YouTube video is a trailer of the movie ‘Reign Over Me’, a strong picture where Adam Sandler plays the role of a man who lost his wife and kids who were on the plane that crashed into the twin towers. Dealing with PTSD he has been coasting through the days haunted by his own thoughts. This movie shows the aftermath of one man who was affected by the events on 9/11.
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/09/140337463/the-psychology-of-9-11-ten-years-later# This website is a transcript from a radio broadcast done by ‘Talk of the Nation’. This radio segment hosts psychologists who came in to talk about the new research they have found. This talk ranged anywhere from tests that measured stress levels recorded over an amount of time from firefighters who survived 9/11 and developed PTSD, to how children were affected by the disaster. They also allowed call ins to ask questions.
5. (Terminology) Naturalistic, Psychology, Internal history, External history,

1) My topic is about presentism and historicism. It fits into the chapter because it discusses the topics briefly. I’m interested in it because I didn’t know these two views existed and that they were important when looking at different aspects of history.
2) I would like to discuss the topic of presentism first. Second I would like to talk about historicism. Lastly, I’ll discuss how they both differ and how they both work together as well.
3) .
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
5) TERMS:
Historicism
Presentism

REDO: TB2

1. Presentism and historicism are two very important aspects in studying the history of psychology. As mentioned in this chapter, there are many different ways to study the history of psychology, and many issues that go along with it. Presentism uses the past in order to understand the present and what is happening now. Historicism is an approach that tries to understand a certain topic or aspect that has happened or is happening during the same time. They are two completely different theories, yet they are both good ways to learn. I am choosing to discuss the presentism and historicism approaches because I believe that they are good approaches in getting a better understanding of not only history in general, but the history of psychology as well.

2. Some may question or even doubt that these approaches work and are valid. But, I would like to talk about why they are good ways to study the history of psychology. First, I would like to discuss what presentism is, and why it works as a way of learning for some people.

Next, I will discuss the dangers of using the presentism approach to studying psychology. Henry Goddard used this approach with intelligence testing at Ellis Island. As I will mention later, this didn't turn out so well, because not all immigrants were let into the country, and the theory of eugenics soon arose.

Lastly, I would like to discuss historicism and what the good and bad aspects of this approach entails. Every idea will have flaws, but does this approach accurately help us to understand and learn more about the history of psychology?

3. As we know from reading the chapter, there are many issues in studying the history of psychology. These issues include the presentism and historicism approaches to studying and understanding the history of psychology. Presentism is the approach that focuses on what is happening in the present in order to get a better understanding of the past. Some may say that we study history to learn from our mistakes and to improve our futures, but I don't think this is completely valid. In my opinion we need to understand our present to improve our future lives. It also works well to understand the past, which is that main point of using the presentism approach. What we know now is big reason why history impacts our lives. Yes, we do learn from the past, but if we get a better understanding of what is happening now in our lives, we will also get a better understanding of our past. This is why I believe that presentism is a good approach in studying the history of psychology.

Although the presentism approach can be very useful in studying history and the history of psychology, there are also problems with it as well. There are dangers to using this approach which is discussed in this chapter in relation to Henry Goddard and his intelligence tests. Goddard used his intelligence tests to screen immigrants at Ellis Island, and if they were deemed “unfit”, they would be sent back to their home countries. He came up with the term “moron” and concluded that a majority of immigrants were exactly this. He believed that intelligence was solely an inherited trait. We might think about why he was so cruel, but we have to think about what was going on presently. During this time, Darwinian thinking was on the rise. Us today cannot understand this because we were not there, but to Goddard, it made sense at the time. This is a demonstration of the presentism approach and why it cannot always be good.

Lastly, historicism is also an approach to studying the history of psychology. Historicism tries to understand a related event compared to presentism, but references modern knowledge and values that exist at the time of the event. I think that historicism is a better approach compared to presentism because it has less dangers. It is hard to avoid the presentist way of thinking, and can obviously turn out badly. These two approaches have a lot in common because they both try to get a better understanding of an event that is occurring by using the present, but I think that I would use the historicism approach personally because I can understand things better by using what I already know, my modern knowledge and ideas.

4. myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/nmarkos/papers/defpres.pdf
This article was very useful because I talked about why presentism can be a dangerous approach, but this article explained why it can be good and defended it. It opened my mind up more as to why it can be good despite the dangers of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gif5-upJ5I
This video gave me a better understanding of Goddard and his theories of intelligence testing. The textbook only mentioned briefly about Goddard and how he used presentism.

Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New-Historicism
This website was very useful because the text book did not discuss and explain the approach of historicism hardly at all, so it helped me to get a better understanding of the concept.

5. Presentism, Historcism, Henry Goddard, Intelligence Testing

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
I decided to do this blog on Henry Goddard, who was discussed in the chapter. I found him interesting because of his studies of intelligence testing.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I will review Goddard’s early life, career, and studies.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize* them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Henry Goddard born in East Vassalboro and was raised in a committed Quaker family. His father was injured and eventually died when Goddard was just nine, so he went to live with his married sister until he enrolled in the Oak Grove Seminary, which was a boarding school. He then entered Haverford College in 1883 where he played on the football team and graduated in 1887. Throughout his education he took teaching and administrative positions in Quaker schools. He also lectured at the University of Southern California where he was the first football coach. However, his interest in psychology led him to Clark University to study with G. Stanley Hall and gained an appreciation for scientific approaches to studying human behavior. Once he graduated with his doctorate he worked for several years at a teacher’s college in Pennsylvania where he became upset with the lack of emphasis on scientific psychology and pedagogy. Because of this he accepted the position of director of research at the New Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feeble Minded Children in Vineland. He is best known for his work at the Vineland School but he also held two positions in Ohio before he retired.
Goddard was especially concerned with separating people with lower IQs and needed a special curriculum. He believed that the Binet-Simon intelligence tests, recently developed in France, could aid in assessing the nature of this problem and began to advocate for the use of the scales in the United States. Goddard advocated for the Binet test enthusiastically, and used his connections in areas such as medicine, education, psychology, and law to do so. He translated it into English, distributed 22,000 copies of the test throughout the United States, and established an intelligence testing program on Ellis Island. Another example was that he taught courses for teachers on how to administer the Binet test at several institutions. Goddard was also involved in the U.S. army psychological testing program during WWI which further legitimized this approach to mental testing.
Goddard’s actions and consistent advocacy for the Binet tests influenced others and if not for him educational practices might be a lot different today.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_H._Goddard
Information on early life.
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2011/Goddard-Henry-H-1866-1957.html
I used this site for a lot of background and early life information on Goddard.

http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/goddard.shtml
Information on Goddard’s influence on the intelligence testing in the US.